Reviews

Kaffe Matthews
at The Red Room and The Velvet Lounge
May 12-13

R A N G E F I N D E R W O R K I N G F I E L D P A U S E

S E M I F I E L D R A C H E T C A T C H I N G A G R A Y

G R A Y B O I L I N G S A M P L E L E N G T H A L T E R

I N T I M A T E R A N G E F I N D E R H A L T E R T O P

I N H A L E S T E A R O O M E T H E R T R E A T M E N T

Q U I T S M O K I N G O P A Q U E F I E L D L I G H T S

R U N W A Y W O R K I N G B L U R R E D G O A T L I N E

R A C H E T B R A C E B A D I T I M A T E T E A R F I N

C A R D B O A R D A M P L I F I E R J U M P R I S K A T

I L L E G A L C H E S S I N S T R U C T I O N R A N G E
by John Berndt
THE RED ROOM: Baltimore, Maryland USA
THE VELVET LOUNGE: Washington, DC USA
Normals Books
Baltimore, Maryland USA
May 14 , 1999

Kaffe Matthews is one of the rising stars on the British experimental music scene. Over the past few years, she’s released two striking CDs whose unusually warm sensibility lifted them out of the pack from the usual noisemakers. Her discs require close listening that reveals strangely moving narratives emerging from the tapestry of ordinarily cool electronics. Perhaps it’s because her main instrument is violin, which she feeds into a piece of software called LiSa, scattering the analog sounds into hypnotic electronic waves or choppy bursts of feedback. As a result, her CDs contain a sensibility that makes her among the most listenable of all the experimentalists.

At the Knitting Factory, she appeared onstage solo with her violin and a bank of electronics. Matthews sawed away and twirled knobs to make an improvisational hour-long mix, using the violin not in the conventional manner, but as just another sound source; from time to time she’d pick it up and scratch on it to thicken up the mix. Instead of a concert, the show had the feeling of seeing an artist behind the scenes in the studio: it was fascinating to watch her–decked out in a blue warmup suit and post B-52’s coil–manipulating a barrage of sounds. When things seemed to gel, her face lit up in a big smile. And then there was a lot of waiting for things to gel. During those times, Matthews face would screw up like she was trying to solve some intricate mathematical equation. In this way, as the piece progressed through various highs and lows, Matthews took the audience along with her.

In addition to her violin, Matthews also incorporates the sounds of the environment wherever she is, making every performance site-specific. During a recent performance on WFMU, for example, she taped contact mics to the station’s windows and admitted the noise from the street as a sound source for her live improvisation. At the Knitting Factory, she sneaked a mic into the Tap Bar downstairs and occasionally potted up the ambient noise. Of course, down at the bar, they were playing some sort of dance music and every once in a while, a house beat would enter Matthews’ mix. She’d smile and sway to the beat for a few minutes before pulling a switch, shattering them to become just another part of her noisy landscape. The restaurant music was part Middle Eastern, part psychedelic and part electroacoustic. With the crashing waves of rhythmic feedback, Matthews at times reminded me of the British experimental band This Heat sans the pop hooks (she has collaborated with This Heat member Charles Hayward).

It’s smart stuff and draws from a number of disciplines, making it unique in its hybridization and openness. By bringing in outside sound sources, she invokes environmental composers like David Dunn, who did a series of important site-specific improvisations in nature in the 70; the violin element echoes the pioneering work of Malcolm Goldstein, Jon Rose and even bits of Laurie Anderson. But the humor, intuition and catholicism is all hers– and it’s something this normally too-dry, over-intellectualized genre sorely needs.

by Kenneth Goldsmith
NYPRESS
USA
May 11, 1999

When was the last time every hair on your body stood on end? When was the last time you stood so still you could feel your pulse through your feet? When was the last time you heard a statue scream?

Absolute Zero is a very strange experience indeed. You walk in off the street and find yourself in a Dali dreamscape. burned trees upended in a huge black teardrop of melted ice figures waiting on the branches. Strange icemen, sculpted to a sliver drip from the ceiling. They appear to sing. Such things are not common on the south coast – not without drugs anyway.

You wander with the rest of the audience in the chill semi-darkness as the music grows more odd and beautiful, wondering what exactly this is– dance, sculpture or just the coolest nightclub chill-out room on the planet? You feel suddenly sad you’re getting too old to take Ecstasy.

You notice the ropes hanging from the ceiling, maybe have a swing or stick your hands inside the grounded icemen whose torsos have been slashed through with half-moon cuts. No, there’s nothing there — no heart, no soul, just someone else’s hand coming from the other side.

Balls of ice arranged like the boulders in a Japanese pebble garden light up and pulse Day-glo green, white and orange. Little huddles of punters stand staring at them until the three figures in the trees begin to move. first they crab out tentatively on their ropes. Then they grow more daring, thrusting their buttocks and their feet up into your face. it gets hypnotic for a while before a gleeful, splashy dance wakes you from your reverie. In a final sublime scene the dancers climb ropes to the ceiling to join the ice gods, now bluey-green and glowing before dropping like drips to the floor.

Kaffe Matthews’ soundscape is wonderful. charlie Morrissey’s choreography teasing, but itis Walter Bailey’s delicate sculptures — done remarkably, with a chainsaw — which linger long in the memory.

If Absolute Zero sometimes succeeds more as sculpture than dance, there are still some genuinely electric moments. And God knows, life throws up precious few. Grab them while you can.

by Fiachra Gibbons
The Guardian: Miscellany
Absolute Zero is at the Corn Exchange
Brighton, UK
Information and booking for the BrightonFestival on
+44 (1273) 709709
Wednesday, May 5, 1999

Kaffe Matthews’ live electronic and violin improvisation follows minimalistdrones, which dissolve into distorted and multi-layered miniature particles. What starts as an acoustic input is soon discarded in order to produce an electronic output. The sampler is however empty at the beginning of each session. The result is a “real-time exploitation of electronics in a particular place at a particular time” – Heinrich Deisl

Impressions (of a performance at Rhiz)

The space is darkened a little. A woman appears on stage, dressed in futuristic contact-wire-connections. Every time Hayley Newman moves in her acrobatic performance a lamp lights up and different sounds are made. Now the stage gets lighter. Kaffe Matthews and Christian Fennesz get started. Matthews uses violin and sampler alternately to play ever further expanding drones. At the very point where the static seems unbearable this breaks and changes into electronic KNARZEN. Exactly those transitions make one listen more attentively. In the second part Hayley, this time equipped with blinking high-heeled-shoes, mounts a table in order to perform a tap dance. A similar effect occurs. The rattling becomes multi-layered, superimposed and overturned. While Matthews is creating a basic structure out of the rattling and the violin, Fennesz interacts to it. Precise stoicism meets expressive devotedness. The audience is that excited by their first encounter that finally an encore is played.
“I start each concert with an empty sampler. The system LiSa, which was developed by Frank Blade and Michael Waisvisz at STEIM in Amsterdam, stores sources of sound which I then modulate live. LiSa is also controllable from the violin through MIDI-switches. However I need something to begin with. Tonight I was using noises from Hayley, the violin and later on from Fennesz.”

This violinist with a classical background was led into improvised music by percussion studies in West Africa after spending some time in a five-headed acoustic band. “That’s where I got, for the first time, an idea what sound could be like if detached from tune and rhythmical structures. I started to listen in a new and concentrated way as I had, up till then, been just concentrating on playing notes.”

During the late eighties she worked as an audio-engineer in London and decided to continue where she had left off without abandoning her technical know-how. “At that time “Acid-House” was the big thing. I was only used to acoustic instruments. The change to electronic wasn’t that straightforward. I learned a lot by performing this solo thing with LiSa, and also important collaborations with folk like Pan-Sonic, Butch Morris, and Charles Hayward. At the moment i’m doing mainly solo shows, which mean I can interact more with the audience and the particular space i’m playing in, and that is the stuff that really interests me when it comes to the making of it all right now anyway..

Acoustic/Electronics vs. Space/Time

The strong suspense of Matthews’ music is the result of the synergetic relationship between the violin as the acoustic starting point and electronic manipulation of the received signals.
“I feel I’m a bit old-fashioned about processing music. I have to feel the vibration of an instrument and the physical closeness beside the body. Basically I sense the vibrating sound of string instruments very intensively. To create such an atmosphere just by electronics or a flute is not possible.”

Matthew’s first release “Ann” (on her own label ” Annette Works”) could be a continuation of Tony Conrad’s “Four Violins” until dissonant sound frazzles break in at unexpected moments. Her second CD “Bea” can be considered a statement about electronically generated acoustic music where the multi-layered drone-sound breaks up a putative standstill violin tone in order to infiltrate into electronic sceneries, roaming around and getting served by different particles. Then seemingly set pieces appear from the background b ut die down. In between, twinkling overtones act as deposits, existing somewhere in the world between polyrhythmic and static drones. They develop their own life and you are tempted to step into sculptures of landscape, which stand in stark contradiction to any urban confinement .

The plan is to break through into meditative sound-deserts where standstill and change are mutually dependent. Kaffe Matthews is not so interested in restructuring, as in creating pure new sound where the bytes do not swallow each other, but where the sound gains scope for development in which Matthews shows delight and frustration. Matthews does not use pre-recorded samples for her CDs, which she produces and mixes herself. At each new session one is confronted with a totally new improvisation. “Bea” represents a cross-section of several live sessions during her 1998 USA tour. “Ann” provides recordings from the “2:13 Club” and Hollywood Leather in London and other venues around the UK.

Polaroids about the temporary state of being.

The most important parameter of Matthews creativity is the “here and now”. The technics of LiSa work as a tool and connecting link between the artist and the music. ” I like it if one does not know what to expect. If Hayley and Fennesz had not been here, the music would have been quite different. With them, however, we got dead noisy, which ws great. I also do have the impression that the audience here is used to this kind of music and so the RHIZ is a good place for it. I do generally use microphones too, which I might place in the audience, for example under a chair or at the bar. The big advantage of LiSa is that I am able to actually utilise the new place and atmosphere i’m playing in. To make music out of it. I can’t reproduce anything – it all happens in real time. I can’t fall back on recorded thoughts or music. So through that a new body arises out of the audience and myself every time. That body will then always be created again.”
So it is a body which asks for spontaneous reaction in different peculiarity from both sides. Every piece is telling an abstract story about space, time and the personal state of being. Memories are recalled. (“A hot bath”, “Bus with Olive Smee”) The description of locations works out as something sound immanent and trend setting. (“Manson13” “Red room 1&2”)

As opposed to many (mostly male) colleagues in her field, Matthews is not into demonstrating technical ambitions but more into letting the audience have access to a part of her private and personal experiences, which could be described as somehow brittle, euphoric even anxious. Far from any kind of psycho-babble, a big part of the emotional cosmos opens up in which a person can find a place with all its emotional up and downs. Furthermore it is not really necessary to reflect the discussion about depersonalised territories while being confronted with technical reproducibility. To hide behind the machine is not Matthews thing, it seems rather that she gives life back to the machines.

There is no need to mention that nearly every sufficient conversant cliche could be associated with Kaffe Matthews. However “cold” and “warm” electronics is not only a matter of opinion. The question should rather be to what extent psychical and physical “work-offs” could be compiled to technical ones. In that point Matthews scores definite in the first category, as she allows the listener to come incredibly close. So one could presume to get hold of a part of Matthews either live or frozen on a CD.

“To share personal experiences with the audience” – that’s her guideline!

Matthews will be performing at the “Among Others 3” Festival in Vienna. Look out for the detailed program on page 21.
[“cdAnn” and “cdBea” are available direct from annetteworks.demon.co.uk

In preparation: Release of a collaboration with Fennesz and another with hayley newman ]

by Heinrich Deisl, translated by Rudy Pollack

SKUG

KAFFE MATTHEWS
Blå Publikom: Ca 180
Aktuell CD: Bea
Fiolinist med sans for Iydskulpturer

Hun regnes i dag som en av Englands fremste utØvere med live-sampling som virkeområde. Kaffe Matthews prosesserer lyd. Hun benytter bearbeidingssystemet LiSa (Live Sampling) og kan få fiolinen sin til å høres ut som alt annet enn en fiolin. Man kan kanskje si at Kaffe Matthews produserer elektronisk musikk mer enn hun spiller et tradisjonelt instrument i vanlig forstand.

Hun har for vane å legge ut mikrofoner som gjemmes blant publikum, eller hun plasserer dem utenfor konsertlokalet.Før denne konserten knyttet det seg en viss spenning til om hun ville trekke inn Iyden fra ærverdige Akerselva som gjør en sving rett utenfor Blå. Tidligere har Matthews gjemt mikrofon i vaser plassert på bord i nærmeste bar i nabolaget, og benyttet lydene den fanget opp, som elementer i sine sound-scapes. I kveld er skillet mellom scene og saldelvis utvisket. Vi kan alle være utvalgte til å inngå som deler av musikken. Det er en nokså massiv vegg artisten setter opp foran oss fra start, men den er absolutt gjennomtrengelig. Tenk deg en blanding av moderat flystøy og sommerlig sang fra siriss, så er du inne i et av Kaffe Matthews’ rom. Men hun lar deg ikke bli på samme sted lenge! Rytmiske figurer med langsom omdreiningshastighet avløses av raskt roterende og gnissende Iyd. Lydslektninger av skrivemaskinklapring og maskingeværsalver farer forbi mens et underliggende åndedrett binder bruddstykkene sammen. Men hvor er publikum i dette Iydbildet? De skjulte mikrofonene gir oss en plass i miksen, men vi er fordreid til det ugjenkjennelige.

Kaffe Matthews lever seg inn i Iydverket og Iytter intenst for å høre om noe mangler. Først mot midten av konserten løfter hun instrumentet sitt opp mot kinnet, og i annen del anvender hun noe konvensjonell fiolinlyd. Det er spennende å følge artistens bevegelser, og selv om jeg kunne ønsket meg noe mer dynamikk til tider, så klarer Matthews å pirre sansene så det holder. Det hun gjør, er ikke nytt. Det gir på minnelser om utævere som Elliot Sharp, This Heat, Bob Ostertag og flere andre fra den store Iydmanipulerende familien. Etter om lag en time takker Kaffe Matthews for seg. Porsjonen har vært akkurat passe stor. Arild R. Andersen

by Arild R. Andersen
Oslo Independent
Oslo, Norway

11/22/1998 live

Saw Kaffe Matthews on the 19th, at the fine Millvale Industrial Theater. I’m not sure what the other dates on her tour are, but it’s well worth checking out her shows if she’s playing anywhere near you. She uses a (Mac-based) sampler to recontextualize and layer the sounds from her violin and from the performance space. The performance was fascinating, consisting often of long drones that picked up additional resonances and changed (and even stopped) on a dime, creating a new space for listening. It’s always interesting to listen to someone who obviously has chops, but isn’t much interested in displaying them. She seemed much more interested in investigating the violin as a sound source and investigating the sampler. (You’re probably thinking “Violin + processing gear= Laurie Anderson,” but you’d be wrong–Matthews is much more interested in sound than in language or stories, at least in the way Anderson is.)

The only downside to the evening was that the first part of her set was troubled by a bad connection between her violin and the board; it was like a picket fence obscuring the view of open land, but she went a good way toward incorporating it. Eventually, it stopped cropping up, giving us a clearer view. Her “CD Bea” gives a suggestion of what it’s like live, although I liked the rumination-on-a-particular-evening feel to her live performance.

Mitch Bartlett.

ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN, KAFFE MATTHEWS, DOESN’T PLAY ELECTRONICA in the “techno” sense. You’d be hard-pressed to find any back-beats or “Get up and party” Iyrics in her songs. Nor does she rely heavily on preprogrammed sound. Her two full-length solo CDs (cdAnn, & cdBea) are filled with only live recordings “with 80% of the editing happening on stage.” Her violin, effects and most importantly, live improvisational technique are what define her musical personality. And when Kaffe (pronounced “Calf”) says she has never played two pieces exactly alike, that each recording is from “a particular place, with a particular audience, at a particular time of day, after a certain kind of journey,” she really means it. Hiding microphones outside in the street, putting them in the club’s kitchen, or attaching them to everything short of lightning rods, Kaffe feeds her show with actual live sounds that come from inside and outside the playing site. (She even hides them under the audience’s chairs.) The drone of an idle car engine. A running faucet. The chopping of a distant helicopter. Whatever siren or chirp she tunes into and samples during the performance becomes fodder for her public’s sonic environs. She works in the moment. Taking her time, drawing out every creak, patiently layering every murmur, Kaffe creates an invisible crescendo which pulls listeners into her world so gradually it’s almost unnoticeable. As the piece progresses and the levels get pushed slowly to eleven, Kaffe then tweaks her noises from something organic and generally recognizable into something almost otherworldly and extremely distinct . The idling engine becomes serious and alarming. The running faucet becomes a steady stream of ball bearings pouring into a tin can. The chopping helicopter blades turn into a swarm of locusts. Once the volume’s turned up and everything’s merged, the line blurs between electric and organic, and what at first seems like an assortment of innocent, almost monotonous tones transforms into a mutant hybrid of intimidating noise. But just as Kaffe scares, she is also playful. She understands what it means “to move” her listeners and she’s in complete control. Because when the cacophony becomes almost unbearable, when the sweat starts to form on her listener’s brows and the walls of the trash compactor start closing in Kaffe shuts everything off. Just as easy as slamming a door, she cuts off the engine, puts the bb’s and the locust’s away and switches the tone to something a little easier on the ears, like what it must be like walking through a carnival the morning after a delirious evening. The sky is grey, the cIowns are sIeeping, and there’s an accordian-grinder playing inside a tent somewhere. But even though this new soundscape seems calmer, the stress of that previous movement remains hard to shake. There’s still a feeling that something just ain’t right. And it might be that mic hidden under the chair.

by Jeyon Falsini

ammassed media
interviews – music – art snobbery – books
down-with-whatever
November 12, 1998

Specificity is clearly important to kaffe Matthews: this live album was recorded in “a particular place, with a particular audience, at a particular kind of day, after a particular kind of journey”. For most home listeners, all this means nothing. The uniqueness of the event is lost. So does it matter if Matthews tells us that 80 per cent of the discís editing was done live on stage? Yes, it would seem, with such conceptual packages, because recorded music exists in an important but shadowy relation to the circumstances of its creation. Matthews is bent on exploring this suggestive area.

As with her cd Ann album, the sleeve urges, “grab, select, subvert and game with the consequences”. The disc’s five performance excerpts are divided over 26 tracks and listeners are invited to constantly reshape them, using the CD playerís random or program button, partially blurring the distinction between the live event and armchair listening.

But enough game theory; what’s it like? Though the only sound source is Matthews’s violin, the range of her sampler transformations gives her access to an enormous sound palette. She gets a long way from the pure tones of the violin, spilling into rich droning microtonal freeways of sound. But the instruments irreducible scrape remains a vital part of the texture. Matthews’s music is at once uncompromising and strangely approachable, and you canít say that about many electronic improvisers.

Will Montgomery (August 1998)

The vast “cdBea” is electro-acoustic improviser Kaffe Matthews’ second major statement, following on with the same live electronics amazement as her previous release, cdAnn. Matthews is a unique musician, dedicated to live solo improvisation within a highly stylized context of her own creation. Her music evolves from three interfacing elements, abstractly filtered through her psyche: a conventional violin, a heavy rig of special “live sampling” electronics, and the social and psychological space of the concert. The last statement may seem pretentiously “conceptual”, but since her concerts exert an unusual sense of expanded mental “space,” it makes perfect sense. Her pieces are vividly emotional: gripping science-fiction landscapes which overlay the physical venue, altering the atmosphere with a dominating, somber delirium; as if the moment were being frozen, expanded, and cast into space. Because they are presented fairly neutrally without pretence and in long doses, the emotionality of her improvising can ring through, often moving into a sincerely dark and dissociated moods. It is probably this emotional intensity, the strange personal sense of place she provides, which is the most original aspect of her work.

The violin serves as a crucial kind of focus in this environment, with its miniature size and visual interest as a counterpoint to the layered masses of sound that Matthews creates. Truth be told, Matthews is a fine violinist, and on cdBea, more of her fiddling is heard than on the previous disc—in fact, some parts really soar in a deranged sawing sort of way. However, it is her ability to manipulate her electronics and the LiSa software she uses which makes her deserving of recognition as one of the most interesting live electronics players going. Specifically she has developed the technique of “composing” live with multiple streams of samples to an unprecedented level, like some of the best improvising drummers and pianists, able to keep many streams of discussion going at once–truly polyphonic and polyrhythmic improvising. The technology she uses allows for this on a physical level, but her sense of timing and proportion is key. Dense droning layers are built up, cut out unexpectedly into choppy rhythms, and then suddenly turn the bend to become entirely else. Throughout, there is very little obvious looping or hackneyed manipulation in the sound, and the total result is more akin to composed orchestral music or tape-spliced musique concrete than the usual direction of solo electronics. A hidden microphone always in the space, used extremely sparingly to add eves-dropped room-sound into the mix, seems like a sort of mental fake-out, adding mainly mystery.

The sound palette of cdBea covers a wide spectrum, often filling a large part of the audible frequency range with streams of transforming sound. There are many parts which are clearly electronic or string produced, and a fair amount of artificial ambience covering everything, which is particularly noticeable in the more oblique moments. Other sounds are more mysterious, suggesting out-dated automatons, household products amok, and telephone switch disfunction. With its density and harmonic riches, her sound has something in common with the Stochastic string work of Xenakis, and of later children like Elliot Sharp, Jon Duncan and Jon Oswald; but also has an openness and emotionality unusual in electronic music of this sophistication. In the midst of the buzzing drones, switching noise, and cascades of clattering, Kaffe Matthews is still there. In her wry way, she is keeping us company as we go.

by John Berndt
Resonance
Recorded
Baltimore, Maryland USA

Hub-Capped Diamond Studded Halo

Kaffe Matthews’ performances have flirted with the unpredictability of these kinds of live situations for a while. Using live, recorded sounds rather than a pre-recorded stock of samples, each of her performances is very specifically tied to a place. Using software called LiSa (which stands for live sampling), she’ll gradually incorporate and treat sounds from the environment with those from her wired-up violin.The tranquillity with which she improvises is amazing. Nothing like the kind of “horror vacui” such an open situation could inspire, more a wry amusement at the sounds that arrive out of nowhere and then disappear. Each one suggests new narratives, action or atmospheres which, like a sensitive and skilful medium, she either gives a voice or patiently muffles.

Mute- Issue 7
RUDE MECHANIC : Beaconsfield, london, UK
London, UK
Winter 1997

The new Annette Works label exists to showcase music combining improvisition and electronics, and Kaffe Matthews is a splendid musician to start with. The pieces on CD Ann combine solo violin with a flexible live sampling system and the sounds of the performance environment (a church, a shed, or a bedroom) Kaffe’s violin is a very successful when looped and layered against crackling ambient noise, and she obviously has a discerning and curious ear for sound. The less successful pieces are those where the violin itself disappears from hearing, since it’s the pleasantly puzzling contrast between instrumental and non-musical sound that really entices.

The Wire
Kaffe Matthews is the Pope of the virtual violin – one hand on the fiddle, the other on the Power Macintosh. But on the evidence of this stunning CD, we should think of her less as a violinist and more as a producer of seething improvised electronica. Last year Matthews played on David Toop’s “Pink Noir” album, and her concerns are not to far away from Toop’s haunted dreamscapes. More grit and dirt in Matthews’ pallette however, and the material is all recorded live. Matthews emphasizes the “here and now” quality of the music by always setting up a hidden microphone in the venue, contributing a wild-card non-musical element and ensuring the overall sound is not simply electronic. On track one, for example, we hear the sound of Paul Burwell cooking.

Within the past year Matthews has completely revised her technical setup: out go the prerecorded samples and Jackson Five tapes, in comes the “LiSa” system, designed at STEIM in Amsterdam by Frank Balde and Michelle Waisvisz. The violin is both trigger and sound source- the physical act of playing the violin remains central to Matthews’ performance, but there is very little recognisable left in the music.

Unlike the horrible drivel coming from the hi-tech hyperviolas and hypercellos in Tod Machover’s heavily bankrolled US projects, Matthews fortunately has plenty of ideas and a sturdy contemporary musicality. Matthews moves fluently from intoxicating racket to delicate lyricism, offering both a search for beauty and fuzz guitar sounds. The core of the album is “To Manson 13”, a barnstorming set of ten pieces taken from a Saturday afternoon concert at London’s 2:13 Club. You can easily lose yourself in these rollicking sonic jungles.

by Clive Bell
The Wire
UK