Sakada

For London's Freedom of the City Festival Mattin's Sakada materializes in a big band incarnation. Unexpectedly, the larger the group, the smaller the sound. In contrast to Sakada's dense previous recordings as the trio of Mattin, Prévost and Rosy Parlane, here the expanded Sakada navigate a more restrained and open territory. Droning passages rise and ebb in blocks, the sound folding over on itself, while minute textures dance on the edges. The emphasis on bowed sounds (Prévost's cymbals, Davies' harp, Garcia's bass, Wastell's objects and Mattin's computer casing (!!!)) brings to mind the slow churning of a Morton Feldman composition, yet mutated further into the realm of the unexpected and abstract. This recording finds a group as attuned to the space in between as they are to each other. An intense document of precisely restrained improvisation.