Matta Gawa – “Dialogue of a man and His Ba” MP3/download
Matta Gawa - "Ba" - Engine Records
Ahhhhh, MaaaaaaattaaaaaaaaaaaGaaaaaawaaaaaaaaaa … kind of reminds of “Goosefrabba,” the saying Jack Nicholson, playing a psychiatrist, employed in Anger Management (admittedly: not a great movie, though John C. Reilly puts in a characteristically quirky cameo as an angry, former bully of a Buddhist) when he wanted his patients to calm down.
But I’m not here to bee-bop an’ SCAT all over Matta Gawa; I’ve been diggin’ on their new album too much to put forth any disrespect.
Ba makes the Nut because, more often than not, there’s a lot of purpose behind the improv jams it kicks out like a Guile leg-sweep (for you Street Fighter II fans out there). Its concussive, hard-like-a-hammer-to-the-head-yet-soft-and-agile-like-super-putty drumming is the first element that jumps out and YANKS my attention away from the dozens of LPs I still have to review/articles I have yet to edit, but all cylinders are firing here; if you are floating anywhere near the axis of artists/labels such as Talibam!, Ecstatic Peace, Devin & Gary, Feeding Tube, Shearing Pinx/Mongst/Totally Ripped/Isolated Now Waves and/or Raccoo-oo-oon, this record will sit nicely alongside the sides in your collection.
Ba, however, much like R-ccoon’s Is Night People, is the sort of exploration that I could see, possibly, crossing over into more mainstream circles (the Not Not Fun set, perhaps, maybe Porter Records fans, Zach Hill devotees, etc.) with relative ease. I might be getting a little ahead of myself — and this band — but this record captures my attention like few all-out improv sessions do.
One of the most important reasons for this is the variety of moods Matta Gawa cycle through with the sort of success I don’t normally see as attendant to such musics. “Dialogue of a Man and his Ba,” for example, starts with a humming, thrumming ice storm you might expect from a Pink Priest LP.
Don’t get too comfortable; after a series of wobbly, nervous strums and astray high-hat dashes MG bring the mutha-fuckin’ RUCKus, albeit with the slow-build patience not common in the anything-goes universe. They don’t feel pressure to pack a zoom-bang-POW into every measure, nor a cheap thrill into every embrace. This is a duo (Edward Ricart, guits; Sam Lohman, druhms) with the knack for subtlety you want in an ambient Kranky band and the balls-in-your-face brazenness one would hope to hear from a group of young people scaring up a goliath-sized racket.
No pots, no pans, people; pure anti-pop contortionists, Matta Gawa are, able to stretch their instruments into new and interesting shapes while simultaneously reminding us of why We, the plebeians, can’t make music like this (well, maybe you can, but as a drummer I’ve found one, maybe two partners-in-crime that can measure up to this level of on-the-spot tact, and I’m not sure, even after 20+ years on the skins, that I can either).
As much as I love it when a group of former grad-music-students rub their collectively useless degrees in my face (reminds me of going to strip clubs; yuck), groups like Matta Gawa prove that polyrhythms, paradiddles and endless strings of triplets don’t Make the Man (or the band).
