proletarian of noise
[2006, hibari music]

mattin's in germany and he runs the excellent w.m.o./recordings label as well as the 'net label desetxea. he's written essays on aspects of music as well as the industry and he also dabbles in some visual art (animation). in regards to his music, aside from his solo work, there's sakada, with eddie prévost and rosy parlane, billy bao, la grieta, josetxo grieta, nmm, belaska (mattin & mark wastell) and deflag haemorrhage/haien kontra . one of the more interesting aspects of mattin's musical personage is his philosophies. for instance, all of his w.m.o./r releases are available for free to download. granted, those downloads are only available in .ogg format, but that's a minor detail when you consider what he's offering. here's some of the artists whose albums are available: bruce russell (the dead c), maurizio bianchi, tomas korber, taku unami, julien ottavi and mark wastell. additionally, mattin opposes copyrights and intellectual properties and supports copying/file sharing/downloading. it's always nice to come across artists whose views on the free exchange of music coincide with my addiction to downloading music for free. this way everyone's happy!
proletarian's title, as well as its cover, pay homage to hijokaidan's 1985 release king of noise. in fact, the cover is essentially the same. while the nods towards the japanese legends seem playful, the music itself is anything but. two of the three songs with vocals are venomous rants against consumerism and capitalism. attitude fetishist is first and opens up with some nice feedback over static with some repetitious percussion. soon the feedback dies down as mattin breaks into his diatribe. lines like "keep listening and i'll make you feel like a piece of shit" and "you are a fucking passive endless consumer" do manage to come off being less reprimanding and more aggressive due to the multi-tracking and manipulation of the vocals in combination with the rawness of the music. mattin's choice of a static-filled base and the single loop of percussion work great in relation to his biting lyrics. the next track, you are stuck as a free human being is my favorite, though. a lot noisier and musically overpowering. screams from mattin, feedback, vocal manipulation...you really need the lyric sheet in front of you for this one as there's clearly a lot on his mind, but you won't understand a word of it without reading this. "your mind is nothing but the cunt of capitalism" and my favorite "your careful listen is fully appreciated, thanks to you i feel like the best whore in this brothel." beautiful. his lyrics are damn good, vulgar, yes, but there's a great deal of intelligent thought amongst the resentment and frustration. on you are stuck the vocals themselves become part of the noise, preventing the whole thing from being a soapboxesque preaching session. i've oft wondered why people who have thought provoking socially-aware, or political, lyrics bury them under noise or by screaming unintelligibly. it seems like the point would get lost in doing so, but i imagine, that's why the lyrics are printed. the last piece with lyrics is the thirty-one minute closer, thesis on noise. thesis is what it says it is, a spoken word dissertation on what noise is and what it should be. it's definitely interesting as there's some embraceable or alienating ideas on the subject such as: "the identity process that occurs as people are making noise must be constantly rejected. to be a "noisician" is even more pathetic than to be a "musician"". with thesis, which was spoken by lisa rosendahl, mattin's clearly drawn a line in the sand. as for me, i've got one foot in each side, but i can respect where he's coming from. the most curious thing about this track is that it's so long. each 'section', of which there are ten (correction, ten listed in the cd notes, but eleven being said), is spread out over the duration, but if you were to just read them, they wouldn't take more than two minutes or so to go over. there's around a three minute pause between each part, maybe for you and your friends to discuss each point amongst yourselves, who knows?

as for the non-vocal tracks, first would be the opener computer music/post-fordism and it sounds like someone typing away on a keyboard that, judging by what i hear, is a hell of a lot nicer than mine. maybe it's an apple. the seven minute desecration of silence keeps the noise going. this one's loaded with shrill piercing sounds that'll probably have the dogs in your neighborhood going crazy if you turn this up too loudly. i'd have to say that the title is extremely appropriate.

i like this cd quite a bit, the only real qualm i have is with it's running time. yes, it's an hour long, but only a half hour of it is actually music or should i say "music". while that might be a sticking point for some people, thankfully the music is worth it. should you not have the money to shell out for this one, mattin's got you covered, just click here and start downloading.

if you're looking for other noisy explorations by mattin i would strongly recommend his collaborations with tim barnes as well as his one with junko (of hijokaidan). that pairing is easily my favorite album that she's done outside of hijokaidan. both are also freely available to download from w.m.o./recordings.

this is the first cd in a package of two that mattin sent me, i'm sending the second disc to blackandgold, so look for that review..sometime soon.

Attitude Fetishist