Mattin Interview

By Dan Warburton for Paris Transatlantic magazine:

In time-honoured boring PT style, I'll start with the usual question about your origins and background, so –

I don't think things should be boring for routine reasons, so let's try something out: I'm interested in extending the exploratory aspect of improvisation to other areas that might seem to be at the periphery of music production such as interviews and the way I present myself in the context of music. I think that our knowledge about a certain player influences our appreciation of her or his music. So I don't make a clear distinction between the production of sounds and the way one presents oneself. A musician giving an interview should be honest: you should be the same person you are at home and the same when you're playing. One coherent subject. But I can see from the way you've asked me certain questions and the way you've edited my answers you want to portray me in a certain way, as someone I don't think I am. Then again, I'm not a singular coherent subject and even if I might have done things to feed steoreotypes of this persona called Mattin, that doesn't mean I agree with all of them. So I'll try at times to follow your game, and at other times to disrupt it understanding that we might fail miserably but at least we'll have countered the normative qualities of the interview. I'll try to go against the stereotypical persona that I and others have created against the mediation of my self-presentation. Against the idea of neutrality in this interview, probably in order to feed another stereotype.. will this ever end? That's the beauty of improvisation, it never ends. When I say neutrality I'm thinking of the way people used to record improvisation sessions trying to achieve as much fidelity to the event, creating the feeling that by listening to the recordings you're almost there with the players. We all know that this is absolutely impossible, that there are always decisions that mediate your relationship with the recording. For example, Dan gives the impression that this interview took place in a cafe in Paris in April, which it originally did, but we are now typing at our computers and it's early July.

Read the rest of this fascinating interview here.

Mattin performed in trio format with Tim Barnes and Tony Conrad on 4/30/05. The session was recorded and released as Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Check out some reviews of the record here.