Matt Robertson’s latest, Extemperate
Smooth, bassy, melodic, electronic
I love being able to toss in a Bandcamp.com widget like this. Here, I’ll do it again.
These two albums are all I know by Matt Robertson, but I’ve read on Bandcamp that he has worked “as musical director for Björk, Cinematic Orchestra, Arca, and Anohni.” I have only heard of Björk, of those four. So, maybe I’ve heard his music before. I’ve listened to some Björk. His website is https://www.mattrobertsonmusic.com/.
I have only begun exploring Tape Club Records’s offerings (Extemperate and some other works are on Tape Club Records’s label (https://tapeclubrecords.bandcamp.com/), and I’ve reviewed Suitman Jungle’s Liquid Lunch, also from Tape Club Records, which is a lot of fun—with acoustic drums, office equipment and office software, and guitar-pedals-plus clean and modulated vocals. I look forward to listening to more of what they have on their label, since I am enjoying Suitman Jungle and Matt Robertson’s work.
Extemperate
For anyone who’s more interested in something reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Matt Robertson’s latest album, Extemperate, offers a beautiful bouquet of synth sounds that are melodic and underlaid with deep bass notes. It’s not a boomy stomp-and-jump fest (well, track one of Extemperate, “Transition,” could be that), but a more laid-back dancing-in-your-mind or dancing-with-your-toes (as I am now) experience. The low drum beat that goes through “Transit” reminds me a bit of the drum beat in Aphex Twin’s “Xtal.” I’m going to do some comparing of Matt Robertson’s music to Aphex Twin, but that isn’t to say I think Robertson’s music is “derivative” (not like Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, which is a blatant rip-off of some of Beethoven’s biggest hooks). It’s a way for me to draw a comparison that hopefully helps to describe Robertson’s music.
I think the track with the strongest character is “Part 9.” It has more timbral variation than most of the others, and it has a motif that is simple and compelling. It has eighth-note bass lines with pounding drum work. It has synth work that seems to ebb and flow like waves on a beach. Following on the heels of “Part 9” is “Boundary Effect,” which has thumping bass drum and minimal snare-like sound and a sound that is similar to a cymbal but which also sounds a bit like a sample of a rain stick or a rattle. As on most of the tracks, the melodic components are typically slow (with a contrasting, faster motif overlaid) and simple. The signature of this album is hard for me to describe. I don’t listen to a lot of electronic music, which I do enjoy. To say “It sounds like another artist at a certain point in their development does it a disservice, since it has its own voice.
“Part 10” has low frequency synths that combine a percussive sound with a sound I can’t name. There is a bit of trance-like music in Extemperate. “Part 10” has a touch of the motif of “Part 9,” just enough to be a reminder, a connection within the album.
The title track, “Extemperate,” is piano with strings, plus synths. The Bandcamp album notes credit the strings to the Macedonian Symphonic Orchestra. It is a silky, ambient track, with percussion that sounds, to my ear, like a deep-voiced analog synth the likes of which Morton Subotnick used on his work “Touch.” It is 8:16 of relaxing break-time in the middle of the album. It’s followed by “Drax,” which is a combo of Aphex-Twin-like quarter-note ambient feel and movie-soundtrack music. The melody and chords are just near enough to pop that it gives me the sense of a piece made for a modest-sized movie audience. There is also synth that reminds me of later Underworld—I can’t name the “Underworld” track or album. It’s been too long.
Further Thoughts
When it comes to jazz, which I listen to a lot, I see lots of dedication by contemporary jazz musicians to the music of many of their predecessors. For example, saxophonist Kenny Garrett has an entire album dedicated to performing works by the late, great, too-short-lived John Coltrane. And he is by no means alone in doing that. Coltrane was an artist whose work is kept alive by each successive generation of jazz musicians. And it isn’t only Coltrane who gets this treatment.
With AI coming into its own, or at least looking as if it will do that soon, the ability to say, “What would it have been like if John Coltrane had written 1000 songs?” and actually come up with music that the AI effectively claims is what that would have been like, is here already. But I think the ability to support artists, such as Kenny Garrett (and Matt Robertson), who are keeping alive and expanding upon the work of their predecessors, is important and cannot be replaced by an AI computer file.
The development of music to the point where Matt Robertson makes the music he does, allows me to grasp the sound of a moment. I don’t mean Robertson’s music “won’t last” or doesn’t have staying power. I mean that it’s a kind of grasping of what is now. And grasping what is now, we can grasp what came before.
I also want to point out that cover art is important. I mean, you can have an absolutely minimal cover like the censored version of Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual de lo Habitual, which is just the First Amendment of the US Constitution (though on the cover it is referred to as “Article I,” which it certainly is not—it is Amendment I—Article I being part of the Constitution that describes the structure of what was the brand-new US government).
Or take another minimal, text-only cover, such as that of Keith Jarrett’s Book of Ways, on which he plays three clavichords.
These have an effect and have character. Extemperate has an effective cover that has character. I love the color blue, so maybe I’m being led, but I think it goes perfectly well with the music on the album. I assume the artist, Anastasia Robertson, has some relation to Matt Robertson. She knocked it out of the park with this one. I spent a few years trying to paint, and it was a lot of fun.
