I happened across Wade Matthews in an IHM thread about laptop improvisation a couple of years ago and finally took the plunge on ordering a couple of his titles – first his duet CD with percussionist Ingar Zach titled “Morke-Lys”, and later his ‘live in the studio’ set titled “Early Summer”, which was released this spring on Madrid’s Con-V imprint. I had been enjoying the former title quite a bit, but I never quite know how to approach music which delves deeply into synthesis (Matthews improvises using a two-laptop setup, with one triggering a software synthesis system and the other manipulating field recordings). Perhaps because it’s not my background, I find musics that deal with synthesis to an extreme degree sort of alienating – it could be all in my imagination but I always think there’s some theoretical angle to it that I’m missing out on which limits my understanding of what’s going on. In any case, I assumed that he primarily dealt with the synthesis side of his approach on “Morke-Lys” while percussionist Zach supplied many of the other textures, but comparing the two recordings I notice that Matthews seems to utilize a lot of rustling, rattling, ringing tones in his field recordings on “Early Summer” which I may have falsely attributed to his collaborator on the previous recording.
Throughout “Early Summer”, which was improvised live and unedited in Matthews’ studio and recorded directly to disk with two microphones placed in front of the monitors of his stereo setup, sounds of obviously synthetic origin are balanced out with resonant field recordings from often indeterminate sources. While sometimes the two approaches are easily parsed by the ear, often Matthews will conflate the two; for example, you might encounter stuttering sounds that might be the result of granular synthesis or of two balloons being rubbed together. The contrasting textures and spatial resonances of the different sounds are used to gripping effect as well; I noticed while listening, and this was confirmed in Matthews’ informative liner notes, that there are a lot of intentional juxtapositions of spatial effects used, with extremely close-sounding events placed among others sounding like they were recorded in large, resonant spaces. The sixth track, a combination of ringing gong-like sounds with rattling close-recorded clicks and footsteps in gravel along with distant dogs barking, is a wonderful little piece which illustrates the different types of stratified sounds Matthews works with and the tension he excels at between tonal and non-harmonic sounds, sharp and lush textures, and different spatial qualities ranging from sounding like the sounds were born in the speakers themselves to distant resonance. Several times during the process of listening to “Early Summer” I found myself confronted with sounds that were just on the cusp of recognizability, with the sounds manipulated and abstracted just enough to make me think I knew what they were sourced from but found that I couldn’t quite put my finger on it… An interesting way to play with the memory and perceptions of the listener if it was intentional… Beyond just throwing a bunch of field recordings at the listener and leaving it at that, it seems like there is a constant dialogue between what is recognizable and what is unrecognizable in these sounds, with both “sonic documents of a space” and fully abstracted textures present, but neither predominating, and both weaving in and out of Matthews’ lacy webs of synthesis. Certainly glad I ordered this one, it’s the best thing I’ve heard in months, and was worth the six weeks it took to get here from Madrid…
Missing Sequences 