Matt Krefting, “Sweet Days Of Discipline” (KSE #220)…new CDR album available now!

MATT    KREFTING

“SWEET  DAYS  OF  DISCIPLINE”

KSE #220    CDR album

$8 ppd. in US (add $2 postage outside US if ordering only 1 item)

payment via  paypal to  django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

When KSE moved into music releases a few years ago, western Massachusetts-based MATT KREFTING was one of the artists (along with Alfred 23 Harth) I hoped to convince to record for the label.  Matt has a long history of fascinating work that transcends genres/boundaries/disciplines, though he’s perhaps best known as part of the duo SON OF EARTH, a unit that to me always seemed to wipe the musical slate clean and build a new music piece by piece from scratch, questioning every assumption, and living in an artistic world of their own that seemed both pre-historic (you got the sense that they would enjoy reinventing the wheel their own way) and primal yet post-modern and post-Cage. That is of course fascinating territory, and when that’s added to Matt’s many other projects and pursuits (including a fascinating and deep album of deconstructed and reconstructed cover versions of some of Matt’s favorite songs—ranging from Richard Thompson to George Jones to Van Morrison—that came out on Ecstatic Peace while I wasn’t looking), it’s clear that here is a man who’s a total original, who is part of no movement and slave to no ideology, and who is one of the least predictable creative forces out there. He has a history of recording for small labels and working with small arts collectives, so I felt that KSE would be a perfect port-in-the-storm for Mr. Krefting, and we’re honored that he has given us a brand-new recording that reflects recent work he’s been doing with tape manipulation, an album called SWEET DAYS OF DISCIPLINE.

There is an elegance and classicism to these tape-based mosaics that Matt creates (and this is no mere studio concoction—Matt performs similar pieces LIVE), a patience and an understatement, a sense of hearing a semi-audible voice behind a wall that pulls one toward it while seemingly moving away as one approaches it. While this album could sit comfortably on the same shelf as TWO VIRGINS or HEATHEN EARTH, it inhabits a world where music is still in its larval phase while also having the scent of the moss-coated walls of the basement of an abandoned monastery from the middle ages. I could hear some of these pieces being used as the music for the most languid and richly textured passages in a Carl Theodor Dreyer film. It’s a rich and varied exhibition of sound tapestries, and KSE is proud to offer it to the listener who’s looking for something unique. We played this album, before its release, at the KSE 6th Anniversary Concert in Austin last April, and many folks came over and asked “WHAT is that? How would you describe that music? Where can I get a copy? “

You can get it from Kendra Steiner Editions. Now. It’s a limited hand-assembled, hand-numbered edition of 133 copies, and about half of them are gone already, so act now…

For another perspective, may I quote Swill Radio distribution, who are also selling the album: “Matt’s follow up to For A Friend. Eleven tracks (one of them a ‘version’) spread over 33 minutes, so even though the music slowly develops, the action is fast. Matt has been doing his solo cassette music for a few years now both live and in the studio.  Matt uses tapes of records and just about anything and records and rerecords these recordings using a variety of manipulations and the degrading effects of cheap half-functioning tape machines and then weaves these recordings into a tapestry, mixing a handful of said tape machines together. For A Friend concentrated on a very melancholy haze that brought to mind Gas without the muffled beats. There are a couple of those style pieces here, but Sweet Days… seems to come more from the Disturbed section of the board rather than the Great Sadness section. Excellent stuff. Fans of Graham Lambkin prick up your ears.”

and why not pick up a few other experimental music releases on CDR from Kendra Steiner Editions along w/ your Krefting album?

KSE #235 (CDR), BOOK OF SHADOWS, “Chimaera”

KSE #228 (CDR), UNMOOR, “Night Driver”

KSE #226 (CDR), DEREK ROGERS, “Born Into Systems”

KSE #223 (CDR), ALISTAIR CROSBIE, “A Campfire In The Snow”

KSE #238 (CDR), DANIEL HIPOLITO/EVA KELLY/BILL SHUTE, “Fascination”

KSE #214 (CDR), SABRINA SIEGEL,”Bottlecaps” 

KSE #206  (CDR), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Emilio”

KSE # 210 (CDR), HEATHER LEIGH, “Empire”

KSE #222 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Sopranino Solo, “ cover art by MP Landis.

KSE #207 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH & CARL STONE, “Gift Fig”

KSE #247 (CDR), MARCUS RUBIO & BILL SHUTE, “Only The Imprint Of An Echo Remains”

all $8 ppd. in the US (add $2 for postage if outside the US and ordering only one album—postpaid ANYWHERE for orders of 2 or more items)

read Matt Krefting’s essay on the work of WHITEHOUSE at this link:     http://www.volcanictongue.com/columns/show/7