I presume there is nothing unique about me associating Mattin with provocation. Thinking over it, every one of those provocative actions that I can remember was made in good faith. I received a nice email from him asking to give thoughtful consideration to his latest release, Songbook #7, as he is worried that listeners might not engage with it. There is much about the album that invites reading between the lines, but I suspect that approach would be to overthink it.
A small fracture appears when reading the liner notes: the record is credited to Mattin yet it states that “this record was made collectively”. It records a live performance, group improvisation to set texts, made in Cologne last November. The group includes Lucio Capece, Moor Mother, Colin Hacklander and Farahnaz Hatam, with texts recited by Marcel Dickhage, Cathleen Schuster and Mattin. I’m not sure how much editing was involved: each track is exactly seven minutes, possibly as an agreed structure. The premise is earnest: “Europe was (still is) slowly going down.” The seven tracks here seek to draw a comparison between revolutionary events in Europe in 1917 and 100 years later.
Looking back to the past may seem a reactionary gesture, but this is not done in hope of finding a solution. Contrast is made between two approaches, “a collective attempt at social transformation and a desperate lonely gesture”. The tension between the individual and the collective, already noted above, becomes the fabric of the music.
Each piece, except one, generates a swirling electroacoustic miasma, accompanied by texts declaimed in English or German. The use of electronics, including samplers, necessarily makes determining individual performances impossible; collective action is often the ideal of improvisation. The texts, juxtaposing events in Russia in 1917 with present-day events, emerge out of the music as often as the music acts as a backing for the texts. As is typical in these situations, the texts may either be ignored or will detract from the music. At times the sound is reminiscent of some of Nono’s tape compositions, particularly La fabbrica illuminata – which in fact gets namechecked in the sleeve notes. It sounds good, but we’re back to finding comfort in revolutionary gestures of the past – gestures which were all ultimately unsuccessful. Perhaps we don’t want change as much as we want to think it may happen.
Even though Mattin (and – possibly – his collective) isn’t foolhardy enough to propose solutions here, the project still seems designed to fail. It’s an honest response to a pervading sense of dissatisfaction in the current political consensus, but trying to “think the present through the lenses of radical historical moments” throws up a set of presumptions as to who is the Old Guard and who is the desperate radical. Like I said, some moments sound like 60s agitprop. There’s a bitter irony in the last track when a tirade making the usual gripes about elections is placed against the latest parliamentary machinations in Venezuela. Perhaps the whole thing is a wind-up, throwing nostalgic revolutionary noises and false equivalences around like firecrackers; the last track extends beyond seven minutes to include the audience applauding once the show is over, neatly packaged away.
Again, I may be overthinking it, but this album seems to work more effectively as a political statement if any earnest intentions are disregarded and taken instead within a gigantic pair of scare quotes. The audience is heard at one other point, on track six. This track is a discussion between Mattin and the other musicians about the nature of the projects, in the manner of Godard’s woolly fantasy of Maoist society. All other political debates referenced throughout the gig melt down here into the most essential, between individual and group. Towards the end, one voice shrugs off the debate, saying “I just like making sounds”. She received a round of applause.
Songbook #7 is available as a download or on vinyl LP – the material object is the only recorded music format that makes a profit.
