#(mattin)

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Mattin

live in Ferrara, Italy, April 2006

From April 2005:

An essay on the back cover of this EP gives a few clues as to what’s at stake: Bao, a Nigerian vocalist, traveled to Bilboa, a touristy location in the Basque region of Spain. Experiencing the same feelings of oppression he felt in Lagos, Bao found an out through punk rock, quickly assembled a trio of drums and guitar, and spent three hours in a studio channeling his rage. The results are on this 7”, and it is punishingly prescient. Lyrics deal with state control of expression, a horrifying metaphor for what the third-world disenfranchised might like to do to people of privilege (“Give Them Virus”), and gentrification’s effects on those it pushes out. Ugly, atonal, and pounding, these three primitive rock songs slug their way through outbursts of power electronic noise, jackhammer rhythms, and thrashy, repetitive guitar. Vocals sound like the second coming of Kickboy Face, and this as a whole comes off as a terrifyingly real example of what human beings are capable of if pushed far enough. The real world equivalent to the Pissed Jeans 7” (also reviewed in this edition). An important record.

First review on the first edition of Still Single. I’m not cringing at this one (even with the Pissed Jeans reference), and am surprised that the record appears now to be both more and less than what I described it as. Downtuned guitar riffs alongside expanding/contracting rhythms, treated/extreme vocals and extreme treated treatments phasing over top. It’s energetic but slack as the production pulls forth and back again like the zoom lens in a giallo. It’s also not as exciting as it was to hear for the first time, for this path has been trampled on many a time in the intervening years. Definitely stood out in 2005, though, as the signifiers of noise rock were then largely absent from the climate of garage bands and electroclash lip gloss. It was still out there, to be sure, but it took politics, theory, and an old-fashioned fake I.D. to make it as relevant as it sounded here. The drummer Alberto Martin from La Secta, a long-running Spanish garage band that if I am recalling correctly were contemporaries of ‘80s American throwback bands like The Cynics, pounds it out in this session.

An outlet for Basque guitarist Mattin, who had noise guitar works releases under his own name previous to this project, Billy Bao appears to have been the name given to his voice in this project, and exists only conceptually through these recordings. You can discuss amongst yourselves where this seems exploitative. Having spent an interesting evening with him once, I’m qualified to say he is no Rachel Dolezal.

Mattin spent a good while in the States in collaboration with (or assuming control of) a number of projects, and while I can’t recall if there were any Billy Bao live dates in the US, this cell phone video sort of confirms my assumptions regarding identity: a number of backlit people churning out a wall of guitar noise. This project continued as a recording entity for at least the next ten years, with its finest moments coming via the Fuck Separation 10” on S-S, and the last two releases to date (the Lagos Sessions 2xLP on Munster, and the Communisation 12” on Insulin Addicted/Fuck Yoga).

Mattin continues to perform and release music, including a number of collaborative Songbook albums, and the test music project Regler, which took repetition in a genre/form to a thought-choking extreme. Most recently he delivered a second Suicide-esque album as Al Karpenter for Bruit Direct, entitled Musik for a Private Hell, which it most certainly is: minimalist pulses, crooning lyrics of loss, anarchy and destruction, Mattin’s semi-legendary malfunctioning laptop, and in the midst of it all a track called “Eyes Without Faces” that is cut from the same thick, filthy cloth as Billy Bao. (Doug Mosurock)

LE SON DU GRISLI #2

LENKA LENTE - 11 JUIN 2017

130 PAGES

19 X 21 CM

SOMMAIRE : DAVID TOOP JOHN STEVENS BERTRAND DENZLER PIERO MANZONI MICHEL HENRITZI IGNAZ SCHICK ARTHUR DOYLE CHRONIQUES

EDITORIAL (extrait) : Alors, plus de bruits dans les murs, plus d’insolents fouissements jusqu’à la place, et la paix régnerait, et je serais son gardien ; je n’aurais plus à écouter à contre-cœur les travaux de sape du fretin, mais cette merveille qui m’échappe : le bourdonnement du silence dans la place. Franz Kafka, Le terrier

"Entre Butthole Surfers et Run The Jewels", c'est comme cela que Dean Roberts (White Winged Moth, Thela) décrit le disque.

Oui, il y a du rock mais il est tellement déformé que même la No-Wave ne vous aidera pas à lui donner un sens. Imaginez qu'un paquet de virus gavé de "fake news" et de saloperies contemporaines atteigne le cœur de ce qui fait l'intégrité de la No-Wave, du Punk et du Rock: l'authenticité. Il ne s'agit pas ici de dire que Butthole Surfers était le groupe le plus authentique du monde ni que ce disque puisse se hisser au niveau de production d'El-P mais tout simplement de présenter cette rencontre inédite entre quelques uns des musiciens les plus excitants du Berlin d'aujourd'hui; des musiciens qui interprètent les paroles de Mattin et essayent de faire face à notre époque troublée, voire à la surmonter.

Dire qu'il n'y a pas d'authenticité c'est tomber dans le piège du relativisme post-moderne qui est une des forces débilitantes à l'oeuvre dans la lutte contre la nouvelle vague du néo fascisme. En réalité ce dernier revendique lui-même une forme d'authenticité: le réalisme de race. Ainsi, il n'est pas surprenant que l'authenticité soit aussi au cœur de la doctrine d'Heidegger ce qui établit une sorte de connexion entre le National Socialisme et ses critiques français déconstructivistes. Même si pour certains ce disque peut sonner comme du rock déconstruit à travers de la noise électronique et des improvisations, il s'agit aussi ici de construire une sorte de Frankenstein, avatar du rock-comme-zombie: un peu comme si Lou Reed nous hantait depuis l'au-delà en connectant les cartes-mère de nos appareils électroniques à nos cerveaux, nous électrocutant de ne pas parvenir à arrêter ce régime fasciste déguisé en nouveau punk, tout en nous hurlant: vous avancez vers le danger, il faut reprendre le contrôle!

avec la participation de Farahnaz Hatam, Pan Daijing, Colin Hacklander, Werner Dafeldecker et Dean Roberts Enregistré le 6 Juin 2016 par Jeremy Nothman aux Golden Retriever Studios, Kreuzberg, Berlin

Mastering par Rashad Becker

“Butthole Surfers meets Run The Jewels”, this is how Dean Roberts described the record.

Yes, there is rock, but it’s so deformed that not even No-Wave could help you make sense out of it. Imagine if a bunch of viruses filled with fake news and contemporary nastiness would go straight to the core of No-Wave, Punk and Rock’s integrity: authenticity. Not to say that the Buttholes Surfers were the most authentic band in the world or that this record matches the production of El-P, but instead here you have some of the most exciting musicians in Berlin coming together for the first time; interpreting some lyrics from Mattin, dealing with our fucked up times and the search for overcoming them.

To say that there is no authenticity is not to fall into the postmodern relativism that has been a debilitating force in the struggle against the new wave of neo fascism. In fact, the latter also claim their own authenticity: race-realism. Nor surprisingly, authenticity was also at the core of Heidegger which somehow connects National Socialism and  its French deconstructionist critics. Even if this record for some might sound like deconstructed rock through electronic noise and improv, it is also doing something else like building a Frankenstein monster in the form of rock-as-zombie-avatar: as if  Lou Reed would haunt us from the other side connecting the motherboards of our devices to our brains giving us all electroshocks for not being able to stop this fascism-as-the-new-punk regime, while he shout at us: they got the traction on danger and you need to take it back!

featuring Farahnaz Hatam, Pan Daijing, Colin Hacklander, Werner Dafeldecker and Dean Roberts Recorded on the 6th of June, 2016 by Jeremy Nothman at Golden Retriever Studios, Kreuzberg, Berlin Mastered by Rashad Becker

Tracklist:

1. Die Form, Die Sich Selbst Formt 2. Jenseits Der Willkommenskultur 3. Die Kloake Der Gesellschaft 4. Einbahnstraße Des Selbst 5. Wie Können Wir Wirklich Wir Werden? 6. Laut-Denken (Wir Sind Schon Wir)

Reviews:

"Active since 2005, Mattin's Songbook project find the Basque provocateur embarking on a number of day long sessions in instant songwriting, using improvisation and collaboration as a means of shredding paradigms, upturning structures, etc. Mattin has a habit of letting concept smother results, but this Berlin session - featuring musicians including Pan Daijing, drummer Colin Hacklander and the New Zealand guitarist Dean Roberts - largely hits the mark. His barked vocals address contemporary political concerns (neoliberalism, the refugee crisis, the failure of Syriza) from a radical left perspective, with a soupçon of Auto-Tune to make the polemic go down a little smoother. Elsewhere, scouring no-wave guitars, sterile electronic noise and approximations of African pop battle for dominance, sometimes settling into an agreeably lopsided groove ("Einbahnstrasse Des Selbst")." - The Wire

"Descritta dal "manipulator" sonoro Dean Roberts come "Butthole Surfers meets Run The Jewels", la musica di Mattin ha innumerevoli pregi e qualche difetto. Pregio numero 1: l'imprevedibilita. Nelle sei tracce in scaletta di questo disco i generi trattati sono molti, dall'elettronica alla no wave/neue deutsche welle passando per il folk e la musica concreta. Pregio numero 2: non ci sono due tracce che si somiglino. Pregio numero 3: l'autonomia creativa di ciascuna traccia. Questi i pregi. Poi ci sono i difetti: lo sperimentalismo fine a se stesso, al quale si unisce una certa monotonio di fonda, perlopiu frutto della mancanza di una scrittura musicale solida. Non e un caso, forse, che alla fin fine sorga un dubbio: che Mattin utilizzi i suoni come un mero canovaccio?" - Rockerilla

"Severe warp and fuxx / Genre-free rock played like jizz / Don’t resist – give in!" - Radio Free Midwich

Stream / écoutez: https://sdzrecords.bandcamp.com/album/songbook-6