CUTS

masami akita – noise electronics

balazs pandí – drums

mats gustafsson – saxohones and live electronics

 

If jazz, as the eminent critic Whitney Balliet once wrote, is the “sound of surprise”, the intensely cathartic, fiercely turbulent live and recorded collaborations between Japanese noise purveyor Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustasfsson, are the “sound of shock and awe.”

Sonic assaults of epic proportions, their collaborations blend the bombast of Merzbow’s grinding white noise barrages with Pandi’s thunderous pulse on the kit and Gustafsson’s ferocious abandon on baritone sax and clarinet mixed with live electronics, bringing to mind a marriage of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Coltrane’s Interstellar Space, with touches of Sonic Youth’s sonic mayhem thrown in for good measure.

The trio released a first recording on RareNoise in 2013 (Cuts), followed by a four-way collaboration with Thurston Moore in 2013 (Cuts Of Guilt, Cuts Deeper), which developed into a further release in 2018 (Cuts Up, Cuts Out).

 

https://www.rarenoiserecords.com/artists/merzbow-gustafsson-pandi-moore/

 

CUTS with Thurston Moore

 

FALLING

 

 

christof kurzmann – ppooll, rubberband, voice and live processing

 

mats gustafsson – slide and baritone saxes, flute, live electronics, piano mate

 

 

 

 

The duo of “FALLING” – Kurzmann and Gustafsson – is dealing with improvised music, with roots and perspectives of many layers of previous and upcoming traditions. Being it improvised music, electro acoustic music, noise, free jazz, contemporary music, rock and more.

In low dynamic territories of poetry and music is the music melting together into something where the unknown meets and transforms.

 

EXEMPLE – MUSIK:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPvlUW5MjHY&list=RDHPvlUW5MjHY&start_radio=1&t=15

 

 

EXEMPLE – VIDEO_ LIVE KONSERT:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZPJWl5BQNg

 

 

TEXT:

 

SOUNDS IN RESPONSE

 

During the 1970s, Susan Sontag and Marshall McLuhan had the insight and foresight to correctly anticipate a future permanently altered by photography (Sontag) and the internet (McLuhan).  There have been many, many social and cultural developments in the last forty years, and not all of them have been as forward thinking as Sontag and McLuhan.  Looking at the state of global politics in 2016, the idea that there has been social progress in the last four decades seems, at best, questionable.  And, in retrospect, it would seem that the intersection between adventurous art and music with mainstream society was much more common in the 1970s than today.

 

In general, two art forms central to the cultural development of the 20th century- the cinema and jazz- have followed the conservative direction of contemporary politics.  Using the United States as an example- it is impossible not to be disappointed by Hollywood films being made now, particularly when compared to those made forty years ago (The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, The French Connection, MASH, The Last Detail, Dawn of the Dead,  Taxi Driver, Badlands, A Clockwork Orange, Two-Lane Blacktop…); and it is questionable if the perception of jazz as an open-ended art form, rather than a musical style, will ever recover from the neo-con movement that began during the Reagan era.  Today’s creative impetus often seems to be more concerned with replicating an idea of the past instead of pushing against it.

 

There are certain individuals, however, who have concentrated on what has actually been developing outside the (now global) mainstream during the last decades, artistically and otherwise.  Christof Kurzmann and Mats Gustafsson are two of these people.  As musicians, they have remained focused on contributing to the contemporary scene, always looking for new ways to challenge themselves and to develop original methods of construction for their work.

 

One result of their research is this set of duo recordings.  I find them to be statements that indicate ways in which it is possible to make music that belongs to this epoch and not the last.  On the surface, its fundamental components seem to come from the 20th century: the saxophone (invented in 1846, but not coming to the fore until jazz and Coleman Hawkins took a hold of it), the laptop computer (initially developed around 1980), and tape music (first started around 1950).  But when examining the materials it becomes quickly apparent that, though the “machines” may belong to the previous century, the methodologies applied to them do not.

 

The six pieces on this album began as open improvisations digitally recorded at Martin Siewert’s studio in Vienna, Austria.  A section of each improvisation that was considered most successful from a musical standpoint was “spliced out” and kept as a composition- the studio was used as a means to produce a performance rather than to strictly document, not usually the case when recording improvised music. Mats Gustafsson (who also plays electronics here) has added to the range of extended techniques for saxophones instigated in the 1970s, by musicians like Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Trevor Watts, Steve Lacy, and Peter Brötzmann.  He’s developed these through his unique approach to the instruments, which is often built upon phrasing power that can stand up to rhythmic frameworks and volume that frequently have little to do with the origins of improvised music.  In many cases, the grooves explored on this collection of recordings are about pulse, but not the rhythmic feel of jazz, nor the timing of late 20th century free improvisation.  And as Christof Kurzmann (who also sings here) explained to me, the instrument he plays is not the laptop, but the software that he runs on it, called PPOOLL and refined by Klaus Filip and Arnold Habirl in 2015, as a reworking of their earlier LLOOPP software.  Put simply, PPOOLL gives Christof nearly infinite manufacturing possibilities for sound- from creating new material that’s used later in performance, to processing sonic events in real time.

 

The elements of construction used to make this album and the resulting music all belong to this century, to this period.  I think it’s clear that Christof and Mats are not looking backward in an attempt to recreate something that sounds like the past, nor do I feel that they are attempting to be futuristic and artificially avant-garde.  FALLING and five other failings is a set of music that responds to the circumstances that we are currently living in, what we are seeing and listening to right now.  Compositions for the times.  As I hear them, abstract hymns for the left as we are faced with the advance of the right.

 

-Ken Vandermark: June 15, 2016, Vienna

 

 

The Underflow

photo : John Corbett

 

David Grubbs – electric guitar and voice

Mats Gustafsson – saxophones and live electronics

Rob Mazurek – trumpet and electronics

 

 

The Underflow is the newly minted trio of Mats Gustafsson (reeds, electronics), Rob Mazurek (trumpet, electronics), and David Grubbs (electric guitar). Their self-titled debut album was recorded live in Athens, Greece at the record store/performance venue Underflow and will be released in the fall of 2019 by Corbett vs. Dempsey.

 

Although Gustafsson, Mazurek, and Grubbs have played together separately and operate within an extensive, overlapping network of collaborators, the three had not convened as a trio until John Corbett proposed the grouping for two nights of concerts in Athens in the summer of 2019. But there is a history: although originally from Sweden, Mats Gustafsson was a regular, vital presence in Chicago during the period when Mazurek and Grubbs were making their mark. It’s Rob Mazurek’s cornet that pushes Gastr del Sol to new highs on the track “The Seasons Reverse,” and Grubbs and Gustafsson released two duo albums in 1999 and 2003 (Apertura and Off-Road), and have been primed for years to take it to the stage again.

 

The Underflow shows the trio hitting their stride instantly, ranging widely and weirdly with utter self-possession as they veer between a dense frontline of electronics; Gustafsson’s lapidary fluteophone and explosive baritone sax; Grubbs’s crystalline, athematic voice on the guitar; and Mazurek’s all-bets-off improvisatory wildness on trumpet, sampler, and hollerin’ vocal. Satisfying as it is, this recording is only a hint of what lies ahead for the trio as they plot their first tour in early 2020.

the music will be released in the fall of 2019 by CorbettvsDempsey on CD and the Underflow art gallery and recordshop on limited edition vinyl!!!

 

 

Touring period Europa: Jan 18th – 25th 2020

Available for  festivals and project all year.

booking: danielle@oosterop.com

 

 

 

DAVID GRUBBS

David Grubbs has released fourteen solo albums and appeared on more than 190 releases; his most recent solo recording is Creep Mission (Blue Chopsticks, 2017). Grubbs was a founding member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, the Red Krayola, Matmos, Royal Trux, Will Oldham, Loren Connors, Otomo Yoshihide, Jan St. Werner, Eli Keszler, and many others. He is known for his ongoing cross-disciplinary collaborations with poet Susan Howe and visual artists Anthony McCall and Angela Bulloch, and in 2000, his The Spectrum Between (Drag City) was named “Album of the Year” in the London Sunday Times. Grubbs is the author of Now that the audience is assembled and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (both Duke University Press) and, with Anthony McCall, Simultaneous Soloists (Pioneer Works Press).

 

 

“Grubbs self-consciously split[s] his brain to exacerbate the essential creative conflict, the experimental academic battling the sentimental artist on a darkling plain. The listener wins again.”

Stewart Lee, London Sunday Times

 

 

MATS GUSTAFSSON

Improviser and composer. Soloartist. Worldwide tours in working groups, Fire!,  NU – emsemble, Fire! Orchestra, Luft,  The End, Anguish and related. Collaborations with contemporary dance, theatre, visual arts as well as projects within noise, electronica, contemporary rock, contemporary music and free jazz.

Projects together with Jim O´Rourke, Christian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, Eye, Joe McPhee, Merzbow, Otomo Yoshihide, Sabu Toyozumi, Derek Bailey, Paul Lovens, Neneh Cherry, Yoshimi and others

Producer and curator of International festivals and concert tours as well as work with his own record labels Slottet, Crazy Wisdom, OlofBright Editions, Blue Tower Records and TROTS.

Discaholik.

 

“There’s not much I can add to that. Very beautiful, very original…Full of surprise and very stimulating. More power to him.…I would vote for him, yeah”
-steve lacy, 2000

“one of the world’s most original and exhilarating saxophonists”   Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine

“He sucks…”
-olof madsen, 2005

 

 

ROB MAZUREK

 

Rob Mazurek is a multidisciplinary artist/abstractivist, with a focus on electro-acoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, film and installation, who spent much of his creative life in Chicago, and then Brazil. He currently lives and works in Marfa Texas with his wife Britt Mazurek. 

 

Over the years Mazurek has lead/co-lead many ensembles of various sizes and shapes including Exploding Star Orchestra, Exploding Star International, Desert Encrypts, Immortal Birds Bright Wings, Pharaoh and the Underground (featuring Pharoah Sanders), Chicago Underground, Jeff Parker Duo, Pulsar Quartet, São Paulo Underground, Alternate Moon Cycles, Alien Flower Sutra, Star Splitter,  each of which possesses its own distinct musical personality. He has collaborated with a wide variety of artists, such as the great Bill Dixon, Pharoah Sanders, Mike Ladd, Roscoe Mitchell, Yusef Lateef, Fred Anderson, Nicole Mitchell, Fred Hopkins, Liam Gillick, Naná Vasconcelos, Rodrigo Brandao,  Jim O’Rourke and others.

 

…all of Mazurek’s work, draws from multiple traditions, each of them already porous and absorbent, and combines ideas from each into something utterly new, while keeping it welcoming to almost any curious listener.”
– The Wire

 

“Mixing the opaque with the diffused and blurring the lines between electric and acoustic, Rob Mazurek’s wide ambition continues to race toward the outer limits of what is possible in music.”
– Something Else

photo : John Corbett

ANGUISH

http://anguishmusic.com/

 

 

NEW group of NOISEFREEJAZZHIPHOPPSYCH BEAUTY!

Will Brooks (dälek)

vocals, SAMPLR, Eventide/Elektron effect pedals, 1 note on MOOG rogue, 3 notes on grand piano

Mats Gustafsson (Fire!, The End)

tenor saxophone, live electronics, 3 notes on grand piano

Hans Joachim Irmler (Faust)

synthesizers, vocals

Mike Mare (dälek)

guitar, electronics, synthesizer

Andreas Werliin (Fire! Wildbirds & Peacedrums)

 

 

“The dark, impossibly intense dirges, industrial noise onslaughts and banshee-like free jazz wailing heard throughout Anguish could be an imposing soundtrack for a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future. This powerhouse, inter-generational offering and RareNoise Records debut brings together an unlikely gathering of members of the New Jersey-based experimental hip-hop group Dälek (electronic musician and vocalist Will Brooks, guitarist-keyboardist Mike Mare), the Swedish free jazz group Fire! Orchestra (tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Andreas Werliin) and the classic ‘70s German krautrock band Faust (keyboardist and 68-year-old founding member Hans Joachim Irmler).

 

 

 

 

THE END

Sofia Jernberg – voice

Kjetil Møster – sax & electronics

Mats Gustafsson – sax & electronics

Ander Hana – guitar & drums

Børge Fjordheim – drums

 

 

THE END IS HERE?

THE END of experimental music as know it?

THE END IS HERE!

 

THE END

The members of the group has experience from work in a huge variety of

creative music ensembles over the past years: Cloroform , Møster, The Thing, Fire! & Fire! Orchestra, Ultralyd, MoHa, Paavo, Datarock, The Core, Noxact, NU- ensemble, Brutal Blues and many other essential groups within the contemporary creative music scene of today.

 

THE END is an attempt to use all of those experiences and melt it together into something new and creative. Something of deeper poetic beauty and harsh brutality.

Industrial Grindcore Free Jazz MEETS Sing & noise Hardcore Folk music Esthetics!

 

THE END means the sensational return of Anders Hana on guitar! After years of playing only intense Grindcore drums, he is now back playing the guitar!

THE END means the first serious meet of the two Scandinavian innovative saxophone free blowers Møster and Gustafsson in a co – led unit!

THE END means the presentation of the extreme voice of Sofia Jernberg in a totally new context surrounded by extreme electronics and drum- activites!

THE END means a totally new group of legendary Cloroform drummer Børge Fjordheim!

 

THE END means THE END

 

THE END is a serious attempt to create new perspectives of contemporary experimental music – where elements of noise, melodies and layers of extreme energy can interact with the different backgrounds and experiences of the musicians and their work in genres as Free Jazz, Noise, Alternative Rock, Free Improvised Music, Scandinavian Folk Music, Contemporary Music, Opera, Grindcore,  Ethnic music, Jazz and all related activities!

 

Expect ENERGY

Expect BEAUTY

 

 

 

The First record, The End – Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen (sadness and melancholy

are  senses   of value)

was  released june 2018 , on the UK based label RareNoiseRecords.

https://www.rarenoiserecords.com/

 

 

 

 

 

booking:

danielle@oosterop.com

http://www.oosterop.com/

 

 

 

 

THE DEBUT ALBUM of THE END!!!!!

 

release date june 28th 2018!!!

with great artwork by Edward Jarvis.

https://www.rarenoiserecords.com/

LUFT

 

BAGPIPES AND REEDS!
                                                                                                                    photo: micke keysendal

 

erwan keravac- bagpipes

mats gustafsson – saxophones and piano mate

the new FIRE! record is here — release date jan 26th 2018!!!!

 

reviews:

https://jazzineurope.mfmmedia.nl/2018/02/mats-gustafsson-trio-fire-cd-the-hands-reviewed-by-sammy-stein/

THE HANDS

 

video: martin malm

music: FIRE! – the hands

on rune grammfon

http://www.runegrammofon.com/

feature in jazzwise here:

http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/breaking-news/14846-video-premiere-fire-take-hold-with-the-hands

 

THE END!

recording is made at duper studio in bergen. 2 INTENSE days of freejazznoisehardcoreindustrialrockethnopsych mash!!!!!

TAKK jörgen!

mixing is starting up next week…. and record will be out in may….. watch out for video and special live mixes!!!!

it was an AMAZING week of music and new and old friendships —- and some great venues: Pumpehuset / Alice, Victoria and Landmark – thank you ALL!

it was

the beginning of

THE END!

WORLD PREMIERE — THURSDAY —

jan 11th – in copenhagen!

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/130556414286351/

——— ALICE IN COPENHAGEN   c/ o PUMPEHUSET   —————

thursday —— jan 11th 2018

THE END IS HERE!

A brand NEW group of experimental music will see the light in 2018!? THE END

The members of the group has experience from work in a huge variety of? creative music ensembles over the past years: Deerhoof, Møster!, The Thing, Fire! & Fire! Orchestra, Nervous Cop, Ultralyd, MoHa!, Paavo, Datarock, The Core, Noxagt, NU- ensemble, Brutal Blues and many other essential groups within the contemporary creative music scene of today.

THE END is an attempt to use all of those experiences and melt it together into something new and creative. Something of deeper poetic beauty and harsh brutality. Industrial Grindcore Free Jazz MEETS Sing & noise Hardcore Esthetics!

jan 12— all ears – oslo , norway
jan 13 – landmark -bergen , norway

booking: danielle@oosterop.com

a RARE NOISE RECORDINGS project!!!!!