Matthijs Kouw
Recalcitrance
Philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers has studied the operations of states and their mobilization of technical practices to serve a presupposed general interest, which involves the production of rules and norms. Such rules and norms are blind to forms of knowledge that are denigrated as ‘local’ and ‘traditional’, and feature the correlative elimination of what does not conform and cannot be standardized – in other words, what is recalcitrant to objective evaluation. Anything that resists subs…
Obscurum per oscurius
The Latin title - 'explaining the obscure by means of the more obscure' - frames a collection of drones composed by Kouw across an extended period, in which the initial moments of inspiration are deliberately obscured in the final material. Long-form ambient drone work, mostly close to alien stillness with the occasional submerged rhythmic emergence, the album positions itself in the alchemical lineage where the act of explanation projects further mystery into what it claims to clarify.
2
Second half of a two-part album by Mens and Kouw, recorded live in studio in December 2014 and following directly from the first volume. The two long-form pieces extend the duo's pursuit of precisely tuned analogue synthesis: deep, warm drone fields that gradually disclose, to patient listening, a rich substructure of resonances, artefacts and slowly shifting collages of texture. Material that resists time as event-based articulation and proposes it instead as immersive sonic sculpture.
1
Mens and Kouw have worked together since 2001, when their first album emerged from the clicks 'n cuts vocabulary via raw mixer feedback recorded to minidisc and broadcast live on Amsterdam's Radio 100. The duo has since migrated into tonal and timbral long-form, combining software, recorded acoustic instruments and modular synthesizer into electro-acoustic drone with audible debts to the American minimalist canon. First half of a two-part album, recorded live in December 2014.