Guitarist Andy Moor of The Ex plays his guitar while electronic artist Kaffe Matthews reprocesses the sounds live into loops, drones, and static buzz, allowing Moor to respond to the manipulated sounds.
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Andy Moor-guitar
Kaffe Matthews-live converter
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UPC: 634479257421
Label: Unsounds
Catalog ID: 02u
Squidco Product Code: 4677
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2001
Country: The Netherlands
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Annette Works, Hillside Studio, London and STEIM, Amsterdam, between April and August 2000 except tracks 8, 10 & 16 recorded live at Instant Chavires, Paris in November 2000.
"Guitarist Andy Moor is best known for frenetic harrangues in the Ex and Dog Faced Hermans. His idiosyncratic six string scratchings get reprocessed via Kaffe Matthews computer on these recordings of improvised encounters. Matthews mutates the raw angular attack and chime of Moor's guitar into loops, drones and static buzz which Moor responds to in turn. Matthews sometimes just loops a two tone fragment, at others crushes the guitar into thin spidery high pitched digi-screech. Veering from rattling unwinding machine cog splinters through short patches of sparse plucking hum calm to loose freeform thunderous excavation textures, they stay just ahead of thrumming abstraction with some odd but simple rhythmic moves that skip merrily around complex dissonant edges, unfurling repetitive patterns, coalescing and fragmenting.
They make a fine unfettered noise and know how to effectively build and release tension. Whilst "She Is Nice" charges forth in hectic flux, "Builder Bloomsberg" opens with a repeated dipping strum over click clack loops that slowly morph into a fluctuating bipolar drone where the sound sources seem to merge. Then Moor builds an ever more discordant fractious guitar onslaught over Matthews' pulsating loops. The track climaxes with the computer ripping the strings from the guitar and strangling an unsuspecting studio engineer. So that didn't really happened but since this is a recording imagination can color the events it portrays.
Kaffe Matthews' last solo recording to reach these ears "CD Cecile", seemed to dispense with the violin that she'd previously used as a sound source, at least in any recognisable form, so it's quite good to hear her take on the guitar here. Mostly guitar remains recognisable as such, but occasionally, as on the low drone eerie ambience that concludes "Here Is Your Coat," the laptop textures seem to hold sway. This would probably be much more fun if you could see how Andy Moor's attacking the guitar as he's quite a visual performer if his days in Dog Faced Hermans are anything to go by.
Something I find a little strange about recordings of improvisation is that they often grow with repeated listenings. This might seem to contradict the essence of improvisation, which is instantaneous action and reaction, but perhaps makes sense of the point of actually releasing improv recordings in the first place. At first this CD seemed to out stay its welcome at almost the full seventy minute mark, but after a few plays seemed to be over in a flash. Maybe the machine cogs were the atonal sounds of time compacting and unravelling. Occasionally, as on the Instant Chavires gig segment of "Here Is Your Coat," it's almost like a lighter fleet footed cousin of the heavy record shop emptying storm of the FM Einheit / Caspar Brotzmann encounter preserved on 'Merry Christmas.'
If you ever wanted to hear the spikiness of the Ex in a much less anchored setting then this is something you should hear and I'd also recommend that fans of Sonic Youth's more wayward freakout tendencies check this out."-Graeme Rowland, Brainwashed
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Andy Moor "Andy Moor [aka Andy Ex] (born 1962) began his musical life in Edinburgh, Scotland playing guitar with Dog Faced Hermans, an eclectic group that mixed post-punk energy with traditional tunes and improvisations. In 1990 he moved to the Netherlands after an invitation to join Dutch band The Ex. In 1995 he began another group, Kletka Red with Tony Buck Joe Williamson and Leonid Soybelman, fusing traditional klezmer, Greek and Russian songs with their own styles of playing. Moor's own background is rooted in the post-punk Britain of the 1980s, but in more recent years he has collaborated with many musicians from varied backgrounds and disciplines. Many of these collaborations are duos, with amongst others Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides with whom he performs a set of rebetika songs (urban Greek tunes from the 1920s and 1930s), French sound poet Anne James Chaton, ex bass player from Dog Faced Hermans Colin Mclean, who now works with electronic music and live sampling, Brooklyn-based DJ, producer and writer DJ /rupture, and Lebanese Paris-based saxophonist Christine Abdelnour. Moor has also begun composing soundtracks for films, working former Dog Faced Hermans vocalist-turned filmmaker Marion Coutts, with Iranian filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi and US experimental filmmaker Jem Cohen. His latest projects include a quartet with Ken Vandermark, Terrie Ex and Paal Nilssen-Love called Lean Left, a trio with Berlin-based artists and musician Alva Noto and Anne James Chaton called Decade, and a trio project with Anne James Chaton and Thurston Moore called Heretics. In 2013 he began a duo project with John Butcher. Moor lives in Amsterdam at present and continues to be a full-time member of The Ex. He is a founding member of the music label Unsounds, in Amsterdam, with Yannis Kyriakides and Isabelle Vigier." ^ Hide Bio for Andy Moor • Show Bio for Kaffe Matthews "Kaffe Matthews: Born 1961, is a London based sound artist and performer of new electroacoustic music since 1990, especially in the field of electronic improvisation and live composition. For her production "Sonic Bed_London" (2005) she received an "Award of Distinction" by the Prix Ars Electronica in 2006." ^ Hide Bio for Kaffe Matthews
12/11/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
12/11/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. She Is Nice (1) 3:14
2. She Is Nice (2) 4:34
3. Builder Bloomsberg (1) 4:49
4. Builder Bloomsberg (2) 5:42
5. Here Is Your Coat (1) 0:39
6. Here Is Your Coat (2) 3:08
7. Here Is Your Coat (3) 2:24
8. Here Is Your Coat (4) 6:03
9. Here Is Your Coat (5) 4:57
10. Allison (1) 3:06
11. Allison (2) 4:21
12. Delta 4:21
13. Ak-47 Mh (1) 2:41
14. Ak-47 Mh (2) 6:14
15. Where Is Edward Panisi? (1) 6:02
16. Where Is Edward Panisi? (2) 5:26
Matthews, Kafffe
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Improvised Music
Guitarists, &c.
Electronic Forms
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Duo Recordings
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