The Bilbao-based NUENI RECS. has just released its newest album and it features Manfred Werder's 2015³ actualized by Regler, the collaborative duo between Mattin and Brainbombs' Anders Bryngelsson. The score for the piece can be seen above on the album's cover and is translated as such:
through excessive fatigue i had thrown myself on my bed in my clothes in the brightly-lit room, and had at once, for a few seconds, fallen asleep
(Walter Benjamin, One-way Street, Halt For Not More Than Three Cabs, 1928)
As with other scores from Werder, it's text based, short, and extremely open to interpretation. Werder specifically wrote the piece to be performed by Regler and it seems fitting considering what Mattin and Bryngelsson have conjured up in the past few years. In 2013, simple flowchart scores led to the two creating their take on dbeat and dub. In 2014, the straightforward "Play as hard and fast as possible for an hour" instruction led to free jazz and noisecore. And last year, the two took on harsh noise wall as the various black boxes adorning the packaging acted as scores.
Concept is always important when talking about Mattin and these projects as Regler have often felt like a critique on music (or perhaps more specifically, our relationship with it). Consider the weekly meetings that Mattin organized throughout November and December of last year and the questions he posed on the event page: "does music contain transformative qualities? Or is it just a soundtrack for our fucked up times? Are extreme actions, improvisational approaches and noise enough to dismantle our conditioned selves? Or do we need to radically reconsider the critical potential of these practices?" As noted on the cover for 2015³, the two are taking on classical music this time. Werder's scores often point performers and listeners to the world of sound around them. As a result, it'll be interesting to see how Regler take on this piece.
You can hear a sample of 2015³ above and you can purchase the album from the NUENI RECS. website here.