A HMV 102 portable gramophone from 1931 playing Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord I just can’t keep from crying”, from a Columbia 10inch recorded on December 05.1928 in Dallas, Tx

Tashi Wada and I were at the GRM Studios in Paris last week to record his composition “Revenant”.
We recorded material for four different versions of two hours duration in total which we want to release as a double LP in December.

“According to the field of cognitive neuroscience, all animals, humans included, when offered a choice, would go for a small, short-term reward over their large, long-term counterpart – the present value of delayed rewards being viewed as less than the value of immediate rewards. But long before research scientists could show and demonstrate this behavioural ubiquity across species, Friedrich Nietzsche was writing in Human, All Too Human: “being able to wait is so hard that the greatest poets did not disdain to make the inability to wait the theme of their poetry”, showing that patience, despite being hailed as one of the most valuable virtues of life, went contrary to the very human nature. And certainly in our era of constant stimulation, virtual social spheres, and ubiquitous availability, showing patience in everyday life has become something of an elusive art.

Cafe OTO is not usually a place where you go to get your fix of over-stimulation and short-term rewards, even if there’s nothing wrong with music satisfying such needs. At the PAN festival a few weeks ago, Eli Keszler demonstrated some incredibly fast drumming to create a wonderful balance of harmonic droning and shattering acoustic sustain. But what I witnessed at Cafe OTO last Tuesday, was for sure one of the most restrained and delicate performances I’ve ever seen there, an experience of stasis and bliss that certainly demanded the ‘not so human’ virtue that is patience – a virtue that, by now, should be a common feature amongst followers of Stephan Mathieu who, that night, performed alongside San Francisco-based composer Tashi Wada.

For this concert, they played ‘Revenant’ that Wada wrote in 2011 for Mathieu’s Virginals project, but adding on this occasion a second voice played on Phonoharp (a table top zither from the late 1800s) on top of the virginals harpsichord used originally for the piece. The instruments were tuned in a special version of the meantone temperament, a sort of tuning typically found in the Baroque era that might have sounded ‘unnatural’ to 21st century ears if the instruments had been played ‘classically’, but for this session it certainly allowed for a wonderful harmonic relationships when played with electromagnets.

If patience was required from the small but dedicated audience to fully appreciate Mathieu’s and Wada’s celestial drones, the players themselves certainly led by example and embodied to the perfection that elusive virtue. And for that matter they played the piece twice, albeit at a different speed each time. Throughout the evening, they used incredibly slow and controlled movements to lay down their ebows on the instruments’ strings to make them sing just the way they wanted. Moving around the cycle of fifths in opposite directions and meeting in the middle, both musicians were indeed following a ‘score’ but with such restrain that it seemed at first the music wasn’t moving at all, forever trapped in a static place of blissful splendor. Mathieu and Wada, listening carefully to each other, contemplating their options, holding an ebow in their hands, ready for the next move and more often than not renouncing and letting the existing fragile harmonic relationship develop its tail a bit longer. At times they would move the ebows already laid down by a fraction of an inch, thus increasing or decreasing the relative volumes of the tones, waiting patiently before disrupting this delicate balance as gently as possible. Thinking about it now, the piece was always moving forwards that’s true, but in such a way that it was more a case of stillness in motion, where one had to really listen to pairs of pitches resonating and fluctuating in frequency and amplitude to enter a new space altogether. A space where the venue itself had disappeared, a space that seemed to be forever floating in plasma of primal vibrations, as if one had been transported inside the essence of music watching the strings moving in slow motion, like silent witnesses of a sonic Eden. A space that Stephan Mathieu and Tashi Wada had built from both ends to conjure the sublime, showing that patience and restrain are more often than not a winning combination. As the performance was drawing to an end, I couldn’t help thinking that I had just experienced a glimpse into the elusive now – a state so hard to sustain that I felt immensely grateful for what I had witnessed.

It’s interesting to think that the period instruments used that night were both from two different periods altogether and yet, when played with electromagnets, were brought down to a sort of common timbral denominator, free of their individual sonic particularities and allowed to resonate as their deceased creators must hear them from the Elysian Fields they now inhabit. Hundreds of years separate us from those instruments but at last and with infinite patience, we could finally enjoy the eternal drone trapped inside their aging bodies. It was maybe worth the wait, and feel human after all.”

Text and photo by Pascal Savy for Fluid Radio, March 2012

“Now this baby is gently massaging then shaving the side of my face off today, I’ve just been to the dentist for a bitch of a filling so I feel a bit out of sorts and needed something to relax me, I’m not sure I’m exactly where I hoped to be cerebrally with this but I certainly don’t want to leave… hang on, I’m putting this back to the start, most intriguing it is.

Recorded live in Buenos Aires, utilising ebows, phonoharps and processed radio waves, this 40 minute piece is an impressive feat of cosmic drone that builds from serene aircraft hanger ambience into something much more overpowering and majestic, these fine German and Argentinian minds melting their ideas into one gorgeous flowing aural substance that shimmers and sings like an android choral society. Around the halfway mark it develops a seriously ominous tone, like some big imposing enemy spacecraft has decided to try and dock with your baby astroscooter but then, you don’t mind, you always wanted a big hunky sugardaddy galaxian affair anyway. Smother me baby come on do it… …I love your monstrous cyberbreath on my brittle aluminium wings…
…phwoaar I’m totally consumed…”

Radioland (Panorámica) is available from Norman Records

“After just recently resurrecting the MAIN moniker after over half a decade of silence, Robert Hampson gave one of only two North American performances at the Modern Theater in Boston on October 15th. Partnered with German sound artist Stephan Mathieu, the performance demonstrated that regardless of the hiatus, MAIN remains one of the most unique and singular projects.

One of the causes for MAIN’s suspension was the constant association with Hampson’s use of guitar, which had actually been phased out of the project for some time. By retiring the project and working under his own name (see the brilliant Vectors LP on Touch from a few years ago), he was able to escape the pigeonholing and receive wider recognition as an electro-acoustic composer, performing at the likes of the GRM. But, as he was drawn back to his previous instrument, a return to MAIN was seemingly inevitable.

I may be mistaken, but I don’t think MAIN was ever a project that did a lot of live performances, so I was quite excited when this show was announced over the summer. Having been a fan since picking up Motion Pool at a record store in a shopping mall over 15 years ago (the thought of which baffles me considering the shape of the recording industry these days), I knew I had to see them.

While I was unable to see the duo’s full gear setup, there didn’t seem to be any guitars present (physically at least). The requisite MacBooks were there, and Mathieu had what looked to be an autoharp and an array of ebows, along with an old radio. Sonically it was exactly what I hoped for: Hampson’s knack for fields of sonic micro organisms was perfectly accompanied by Mathieu’s fragmented, ghostly textures.

From a sparse opening, MAIN quickly layered a variety of tones and textures together, with a surprising amount of variation. I have heard many performances (and recordings) of artists working in similar realms in which repetition was prevalent, here it was an ever-flowing river of change. Sheets of rain-like white noise were quickly supplanted by spectral tones, to then be replaced with delicate crackling static.

The two stood side by side for the entire performance, rarely communicating directly but there seemed to be no need. The noises each of them were creating blended together seamlessly, sounding as perfectly composed as any collaboration could. The sound constantly evolved and mutated throughout the entire piece they played, and even the slow dismantling of their gear proved to be audio fodder: the short clicks and pops of Mathieu’s ebows being disconnected was stretched out into a wonderfully sparse series of rhythmic textures.

The Modern Theater proved to be an ideal venue for this show, as it balanced the intimacy of a small theater with a powerful sound system, resonating Hampson and Mathieu’s work clearly, but never overpowering. Subtlety was key, and the sound reproduction (and audience) clearly respected that.

While Hampson never went away from music, MAIN carries a different vibe and weight to it than his solo work, and even now, nearly two decades since the project began, it still has the same familiar feel to it. Mathieu, a unique and very powerful artist in his own right, fit in perfectly with the MAIN sound. Knowing that there is new Robert Hampson and MAIN material in the pipeline, this show only made me more excited for when it finally sees the light of day. Although I can’t be 100 percent sure, I’m pretty confident I heard a nice swell of processed guitar noise at one point in the performance, perfectly heralding MAIN’s return.”

Creaig Dunton for Brainwashed

… awaits you, your love, creativity and noise.

Welcome Caro

A Gilded Eternity


Double-LP on Minority Records, Prague


Duration 80.00

–


Analog reprocessing by Henner Dondorf at Andromeda Studio

DMM cut by Hendrik Pauler for Pauler Acoustics

Audiophile pressing on 140g clear vinyl by Pallas Group GmbH

–

Design concept by Caro Mikalef for Studio Cabina

Triple gatefold cover, 350g reverse side printed card stock

Fully printed inner sleeves

A1 size poster (33 x 23″ / 84 x 59cm)

–

Edition of 155 copies,
individually inscribed and hand-numbered

Each copy includes a 24bit FLAC download code

–

The set is 49 Euro + 5.50 worldwide shipping,
please send an email if you want to order a copy

–

“Mathieu’s musical precision, although always laser-like in its exactitude, is never immediately gratifying in the usual mathematical sense. It is more like the all encompassing, gargantuan, and gracious precision of the Sun, which we may be less likely to notice because we’re programmed to think of precision in terms of the minuscule. This precision defines the technical brilliance it addresses rather than simply instantiates it; it is what separates Mathieu from the horde of other artists in the proliferating genre.”

The Silent Ballet

–

“If it had been Mathieu’s ambition on A Static Place to, like Rothko, “create a place”, he would have overachieved. He has done far, far more than this, with masterpieces which completely obliterate the boundaries between different places and times, to create new singularities. These are recordings to treasure forever, whatever forever means.”

The Liminal

–

“Mathieu operates with the utmost precision in a sound sculpting capacity, and his handling of the material is so controlled the tension generated can start to feel unbearable. (…) However Mathieu goes about creating the material he does, it’s always eminently accessible and, on its own sweeping terms, ultra-musical.”

Textura

–

“Mathieu lets a droning stillness take wing to higher spheres as we linger in awe.”

TouchingExtremes

–

… more reviews »

–

–

–

–

–

–

“With two brilliant albums recently released (Remain and A Static Place), and time spent playing live with Robert Hampson in the reactivated version of MAIN, Stephan Mathieu has been leaving quite an impact on me this past year, and this live collaboration with Argentina’s Caro Mikalef continues that streak of genius.

Originally commissioned as an audio-visual piece, Radioland works perfectly well on its own as a purely sonic document. Using only a phonoharp, radios, ebows and processing, the result is a slow, developing piece that never seems to stop developing over its 40-plus minute duration.

Between the use of organic sound sources and the live recording (the performance was recorded through Fender amps via microphones), the natural warmth that Mathieu specializes in shines through on here, which is something too many works such as this often lack.
The performance opens with distant rumblings that eventually swell up and then linger, reverberating off in the darkness. Different layers of sound swell up, mostly just sparse tones early on but they echo beautifully, then recede before they have a chance to overstay their welcome.

Throughout the piece, there is a sense of slow movement. It feels less like a single piece and more like a series, intertwined together perfectly, seamlessly flowing from one to the next. The performance alternates between shimmering, tonal passages that extend forever and more dissonant, textural layers of delicate static. Sometimes there are seemingly infinite strings expanding into space, and other times it sounds like a long-lost garbled radio transmission sneaking in.

Glorious, soaring highs alternate with deep, pensive lows that make this an overall darker work than much of Mathieu’s previous recordings, but it still is undeniably his work. Rich tones and hollow metallic reverberations are eventually met with sheets of white noise towards the final third of the piece, changing the direction somewhat and eventually ending things on an even more dissonant, murky note.

Radioland does have a distinctly different feel than Mathieu’s other output, which is likely the result of collaborating with Mikalef, as well as the live setting, but it is by no means weaker. Instead it is a different, slightly darker and rawer sounding performance that stands on its own. The way the different tones and textures segue into one another so well, a natural and dynamic feeling has been established throughout that keeps it fascinating from beginning to end.”

Creaig Dunton for Brainwashed

March 13

Virginals
(Tashi Wada + Stephan Mathieu)

Café Oto
London .UK
»

March 14

Virginals
(Tashi Wada + Stephan Mathieu)

Les Ateliers Claus
Brussels .BE
»

March 15–17

Residency at GRM Studios

Paris .FR
»

March 18

Radioland
(Caro Mikalef + Stephan Mathieu)

Matadero Art Center
Madrid .ES
»

March 31

DJ Set with Caro Mikalef

Exrotaprint
Berlin .DE
»

May 11

Music for Columbia Phonoharp

Göteborg Art Sound Festival
Göteborg .SE
»

May 31

MAIN
(Robert Hampson + Stephan Mathieu)

PrimaveraSound Festival
Barcelona .ES
»

Silkscreened scanner drawing by Pedro Tudela

Music by David Maranha and Stephan Mathieu

–

Soon on Crónica / Fundação Serralves in an edition of 300

The Radioland (Panorámica) CD is now available in a limited edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered by Caro and me.

Price including worldwide shipping is 18.50 Euro,
please send me an email if you want to order one of them.

I will send you a link for a 24bit Flac download once payment is done.

Thanks for your support,
Stephan

CD on Line, Washington DC
Duration 40.40

Photo collage by Caro Mikalef
Design by Richard Chartier

Edition of 500

※ Release date is February 14, with pre-orders starting on February 06 ※

–

Panorámica (First movement)

Panorámica (Final movement)

–

From the press release:

After 2011′s quickly sold-out edition Remain, Stephan Mathieu returns to Line with a majestic new collaborative live work with Argentine artist Caro Mikalef.

Radioland (Panorámica) is an audiovisual piece commissioned by Wili Peloche and Martín Borini for Panorámica, performed live on March 11, 2011 at Espacio Fundación Telefónica Buenos Aires with a setup comprising two Fender Twin amps, an Ampeg SVT-810 and a 21 x 4m video projection.

–

Caro Mikalef. Columbia Phonoharp, Ebows
Stephan Mathieu. Radio, processing

Today Minority Records of Prague have announced the special double vinyl edition
of A Static Place for pre-ordering.

The reissue is made in friendly agreement with 12k who have published
the now sold out CD version in 2011.

–

For this 2LP set the 24bit CD master has been completely reprocessed by
Henner Dondorf at Andromeda Studio using a Neumann desk and a Studer A80
reel to reel mastering machine.

Coda (For WK), a new 20 minutes exclusive track recorded in October 2011,
gives A Static Place a total program time of 80 minutes.

The vinyl production is made to the highest standards utilising DMM cut
by Hendrik Pauler at Pauler Acoustics, pressed on audiophile clear vinyl
by Pallas, Germany.

–

The records will be housed in a massive triple gatefold cover, including printed
inner sleeves and an A1 full color poster featuring a stunningly beautiful design
by Caro Mikalef for Studio Cabina, Buenos Aires.

–

A Static Place comes in a limited edition of 155 copies, hand-numbered and
individually inscribed by me.

You can place pre-orders with Minority Records now, the set ships on its
official release date, February 21.2012.

Inside

12AT7 glow (detail)

Here is a rework I made for Connor Bell’s Shedding project. Connor had sent me the recordings of his Tear in the Sun LP, I made a re-arrangement of his playing on the harmonium, played this back through two 1972 Fender Twin Reverb amps and re-recorded a 60 minutes take changing the amp’s tone controls while recording onto a Nagra IV-S reel-to-reel machine for tape saturation.

The whole collection of versions, including works by Brad Laner, Jan Werner and others can be found here.

–

Coincidence and Patience

–

Download @320kbs