Mattin is a musician and performance artist from the Basque Country. He has produced a slew of releases under the names of Deflag Haemorrahge/Haien Kontra, Sakada, Billy Bao, and No More Music. He has also collaborated with many artists, including Drunkdriver, Margarita Garcia, Tim Goldie, Taku Unami and Tony Conrad, to name a few. His work mixes laptop electronics with politics and, in the case of Billy Bao, some harsh, deconstructed rock and roll. In the live setting, Mattin is subversive, sometimes abrasive, and always finding ways to undermind audience expectations and break the boundaries inherent to performance.
Archive for the ‘Horizons’ Category
FUCK SEPARATION: A Conversation, by Alessandro Keegan/Mattin
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009The Reactable: “That was one of the goals: let’s allow everyone to have fun playing the instrument.”
Friday, May 1st, 2009If you have ever heard or seen the Reactable in action, it was probably during Bjork’s 2007 tour. Largely influenced by the Moog synthesizers of the ’60s and ’70s, this new instrument is a translucent table with movable colored blocks that produces a range of rhythms, melodies, and sequences. If the Reactable has not received the mainstream recognition it warrants, this may be because it is not its tonal qualities that make it revolutionary for live performance, but its components. While its sound is unlikely to break the mold, the Reactable is a dramatic innovation in both interactive performance and music technology.
An Extremely Drastic Case of Déjà Vu: Karole Armitage and Rhys Chatham Revive Underground Dance Classic in NY
Monday, March 30th, 2009
People who view the New York No Wave scene as one of the last truly exciting chapters in the city’s cultural history can buy as many compilations and artist’s monographs as they like, but nothing beats an opportunity to time-travel. Earlier this month at The Kitchen, New Yorkers jumped at a chance to spend two hours back in the early ’80s — a time when drive-by shootings and burning cars were daily staples of downtown life, but also when a late-night walk down 19th street just might land you in the middle of a dialogue between a professional ballet dancer and an army of electric guitars. Think Punk!, an evening of music and physical performance by choreographer Karole Armitage, cast a younger generation of New York Noise-makers in a recreation of Drastic Classicism, an explosive collision of classical ballet and No Wave punk…
Why? + Volcano! + Son Lux at the SOY Festival (Nantes): Why? Because!
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008. Coup d’envoi for the sixth edition of Nantes’ SOY Festival. Outside the Barakason, the impatience of the Yamoy crew and the festival’s annual supporters is at fever pitch. The Yamoy association has cooked up a storm for us this year: more artists than ever before (twenty), more venues (a dozen, disseminated throughout Nantes and its outskirts), and headliners fit for the biggest independent music festivals on this side of the Atlantic. On the bill for this first installment, Son Lux, Volcano and Why?, three groups sharing an affinity for beard growth and an ambitious take on pop music.
Acid Mothers Temple + No Age + Stearica at the Soy Festival (Nantes): And May Music Forever Win Out over the Rain
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Those of us with enough chutzpah to hold out to the end of Yamoy’s 4-day new music marathon last week, through rain and through more rain, through the good, the great, and the just plain so-so, were in for a farewell that would somehow manage leave us hungry for even more: Soy Festival 2009, anyone? On the heels of Chris Corsano and Mick Flower’s raga-style free-for-all just a few blocks away, the final chapter of this year’s Soy Festival at the Pannonica typified the association’s penchant for providing a little something for everyone—provided, of course, that that something is not what the people of Nantes might ordinarily hope to hear on a Sunday night…or any other night, for that matter.
Grey Skull at Instants Chavirés (Paris): The Sound of Things Falling Apart
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
On Friday, April 4th, the Western Massachusetts noise trio Grey Skull drive 7 hours from Amsterdam to Paris for a set that would clock in at just under 13 minutes. A bit brief, yes. But quite a feat for a group who use up so much energy live that they can only promise to “play until [they] can’t anymore.”





