Kaffe Matthews - Cd Cécile (1999)

"Kaffe Matthews has been making and performing new electro-acoustic music since 1990. She is acknowledged as a leading figure and pioneer in the field of electronic improvisation and live composition making on average 50 performances a year worldwide. In 1997 she established the label Annette Works, releasing the best of these events on the six cd's, 'cd Ann', 'cd Bea' , 'cd cecile' ,'cd dd', 'cd eb and flo' presenting an annual document of ever developing sound worlds.

Currently she is rarely performing, instead directing the collaborative research project Music for Bodies with multidisciplinary professionals and the community, bringing new music and some ideas about listening to everyone.(NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship, 2005).

Kaffe has become known for making site-specific sound works live, playing in the dark in the middle of the space, the audience surrounding her, the sounds moving around them. She uses self-designed software matrices through which she pulls, pushes and reprocesses sounds live, using microphones, a theremin, and feedback within the space; the site then becoming her instrument.

It is this practice that she has shifted to sonic furniture building, with Sonic Bed_London (Distinction: Prix Ars Electronica, 2006) and the Worldwide Bed project being a central pin in this ongoing project.

Kaffe also collaborates and has worked and performed with many artists worldwide including AGF, Ryoko Kuwajima, Eliane Radigue (The Lappetites), David Muth, Shri, Mandy McIntosh, Zeena Parkins, Sachiko M, Brian Duffy, Leafcutter John, Janek Schaeffer, Ikue Mori, Marina Rosenfeld, Pan-Sonic, Alan Lamb, Christian Fennesz, and ongoing democractic stuggles with pan-European electronics orchestra 'MIMEO'. Her most recent collaborative release, Before the Libretto, by the Lappetites, was voted in the WIRE's best top 10 new releases for 2005.

She has also been making a growing body of composed works through collaborations with a variety of people, things and processes. From working with NASA astronauts researching the sonic experience of space travel, making BAFTA awarded Weightless Animals: kites and the weather on an uninhabited Scottish island,Sanda, Weather Made; taut Wires in the Australian outback with Alan Lamb; Touching Concrete Lightly for MIMEO and the Oscar Niemeyeyer Pavilion 2003, Serpentine Gallery; and the innovative Radio Cycle, a concept and works for maps, bikes and radios.

Kaffe's Background:

Playing classical violin from the age of 7, singing badly in one band but getting further with bass and drums in another which recorded and toured for 4 years, in 1985 she discovered electricity and sound and with that, her current trajectory.

Since then, acid house engineering, electrically reconstructing the violin, Distinction for a Masters in Music Technology, introducing and running a Performance Technology course at one of the leading Live Arts Colleges in the UK, and establishing the label Annette Works. She also set up a shop and did a Zoology degree along the way." [in annette works]

1-3. Contact C
4-12. My Love Gave Me A Blue Plastic Watch
13-19. Skagerrak:
13. This Many B Planes
14. The Air Underneath
15. The Surface Is Air I Believe
16. At Night
17. The Air Hostess
18. Touch Down
19. Outside

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