Matom
Love Mistakes LP
Planet E
7.5/10
‘Love Mistakes’ sees Carl Craig’s Planet E imprint venturing into more unusual and unconventional territory. Matom began life as a one-off project between Radio Slave's Matt Edwards and Thomas Gandey to celebrate the iconic Hansa recording studio in Berlin. With initial recordings based on David Bowie’s ‘Low’ and Iggy Pop, ‘Love Mistakes’ is a purely organic trip featuring no MIDI, just an array of analogue equipment.
The use of analogue hardware is stamped all over the record – you can sense the hands-on experimentation of each track, as elements warp and falter, and nuances become an ever-present throughout. These nuances lend the music a pleasantly organic feel that is so easily lost in electronic music – you can imagine the dust being brushed off the old Moog synths and Roland drum machines in the studio.
Opener ‘Crossroads’ is a dark, ambient and dramatic introduction to the album’s soundscapes, trading in the kind of eerie tension you’d find in horror film soundtracks. ‘Experiment 1 Variation 3’ propels the momentum, containing a rapidly bouncing dub bass line with fidgeting percussion and bursts of piano. The track has a relentless pull to it, churning forward with a relaxed and loose feel, yet still elements of vitality.
‘Hansa’ drives more with a four to the floor kick drum as smooth velvet-like pads float before ‘Warsaw’ flips things with tripping percussion, swathes of cosmic synths and swirling effects.
Each of the tracks contains a particular simplicity, often playing around looping sounds, which contribute to producing distinct moods and atmospheres. ‘Love Mistakes,’ as a full body of work, serves to guide the listener through light and dark shades of atmosphere, which peak and trough throughout.
‘Piano 2 Variation 4’ has a much more musical approach than anything else on the album, with a looping piano phrase interchanging with stabbed chords amongst the kind of reverb that makes you imagine you’re in a huge empty theatre. Eventually sparse percussion enters the fray as rapid piano arpeggios dance and jump.
The tracks can seem to have a certain amount of simplicity about them on first listen, but before long you come to realise the layers within the music, which lend it such richness.
The closer and title track ‘Love Mistakes’ sees the album come to an end with yet more flourishes, clanging percussion and deep pads.
As a whole, the album plays with sculpting rich textured soundscapes with patience and the obviously natural and organic nature of the music gives the music a particularly pleasant listenability.
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