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Part 1

Name: Mattie Barbier

Nationality: American

Occupation: Trombone player, composer
Current Release: Mattie Barbier's threads is out via sofa.
Recommendations: Eliane Radigue - Intermediary Spaces; Kaori Suzuki - Music for Modified Melodicas; Legacy Russell - Glitch Feminism (I know it’s three, but it’s really great)

If you enjoyed this interview with Mattie Barbier, visit their official website for more information.

Over the course
of their career, Mattie Barbier has worked with a wide range of artists, including Sarah Davachi and Michael Pisaro.

[Read our Sarah Davachi interview]
[Read our Sarah Davachi interview about her creative process]
[Read our Michael Pisaro interview]



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started playing trombone around age ten in a school band but didn’t really have much of a relationship with music until I was a teenager and didn’t start writing music until later.

I got really into the trombone when I first heard a Mahler symphony in person when I was 16. It was not so much because of the music, which is really lovely, but because of the sensory experience of having that much sound existing in a space and all of the additional sounds that many frequencies going at once generate. That experience totally changed the direction of everything for me and has led to a lot of searching on how to make that kind of continual breadth and thickness of sound while playing a wind instrument that has a very non continual way of producing sound.

That was in 2000 and I still very much feel like I’m searching for a way to do it, especially acoustically because I'm a bit of a luddite, and this album feels like one of the first times I’ve really felt like I’ve been able to do that.

Along the way I really got into this CD I bought at the Bent Crayon when I was living in Cleveland by the Mt. Vernon Arts Lab entitled One Minute Blasts Rising to Three and then Diminishing which I knew absolutely nothing about (and still don’t to be honest) because I liked the cover. It’s just one quite slow moving 20’ minute track and I’d not really heard anything like it at the time, but it was really freeing because it was the first time I found a record that did something like that. It really gave me permission to start to find a way to make things that are driven by slow changes in texture.



I also really got into Elain Radigue’s work and that really helped so much in finding ways to be comfortable with moving into an acoustic, or at least unprocessed realm of work. I especially found her writing and interviews to really help allow me to have permission to explore sounds and how to listen without trying to be super precious and reductionist in my work while also letting go of some of the sonic brutality brass instruments easily default to ...

Her work has felt really freeing to just hear sound as it is rather than trying to reduce it down into a controllable sound or specific function. It really has helped me find a way to stop fighting my horn and just accept its sounds and limitations.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

When I’m listening to stuff that is really what I like, I feel like things shut off much more than anything happening. It’s like someone is going through my head turning off valves that control anxiety, intrusive thoughts, tension, etc and just starts to hear the sound that’s there. Which is really great cause I basically function on anxiety and coffee.

So when I’m making work I think I’m always trying to make sounds that just let me be where I am and hear what’s sounding in that moment without being held and static.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

Developing a personal voice has been a really slow process for me. I’ve known since I was fairly young that it is something I had to do, but it’s taken me a really long time to give myself permission to prioritize that.

While it’s often a source of frustration, I think that slowness has really been an important part of the development of my personal voice as it’s forced me to be a lot more patient with my process. I don’t think I’d have that patience if I’d allowed myself the space to have a sound that’s my own at an earlier age.

Another part of the challenge is that the sounds that interest me the most are either not quite what the trombone does or are quite difficult to make on the trombone. So having a long time that was focused on playing other people’s work allowed me a lot of time to try and figure out how to make that happen rather than changing what I want to do to fit what my instrument does. I don’t quite know why, but the need to find a way to reach that voice with my instrument rather than making those ideas fit within what I could do at the time has always felt like a priority I am compelled to pursue.

A big breakthrough for me was also the first times I got to play in truly resonant environments - a silo in Owen’s Valley and a concrete cowshed in Berlin - because those felt like the first times I could just go somewhere with just my trombone, which still feels like such a critical part of my voice, and make the type of sound that speaks most directly to me. Both those things happened in 2011 and I feel like I’ve been slowly working to give myself permission to make that kind of work (vs what I feel like I should be making and prioritizing) ever since.

This new album feels like I’m finally allowing that to happen and it's very personally exciting.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.  What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

A key thing that I find really interesting and that drives a lot of my own work are concepts and phenomena that I find interesting while also not fully understanding. Not being able to fully understand something while liking the way it sounds and works is a thing that really interests and drives me creatively.

A lot of my approach sets parameters, whether they be conceptual forms and pitch spaces or instrumental preparations, and then just kind of making a leap without being fully sure what they will produce. I think the feeling of setting boundaries or safety and then just letting things be chaotic within them brings a lot of comfort. It’s kind of the opposite of how I feel in the world where everything just feels kind of chaotic and sensorily overwhelming that making a controlled space for it feels quite cathartic.

On the identity side it’s been a strange journey as a pretty masc enby who does like to play quite loud instruments of finding a balance of a practice that creates a density of exploratory sound that doesn’t cross into this territory that a lot of music does of being focused on and about the difficulty of its creation rather than just being about sound existing and being used to express something. I think a lot of the sonic results are probably the same, but so much music makes me pretty uncomfortable in relation to that in a way that’s a bit difficult for me to really put a finger on in a definable way.

I pretty often feel like I’m kind of constantly looking for this thing that sounds and feels right without being totally sure of what it is I’m looking for. Which, if I’m honest, I generally feel about my personal identity in and outside of music and then searching and uncertainty really affects my preferences, both in my own work and that of others, as well as approach to making work.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

The earliest surviving example of my instrument is from, I believe, 1551 and honestly not much has changed since then, so, while most of my work is about making the trombone sound unlike what it always sounds like, I really feel like any sound I can make has probably been made in the last 500 years.

So I kind of feel like focusing on originality will set me up for frustration when I learn about someone else who already has developed something similar …speaking from the experience of that happening a lot.

I try not to think so much about originality but on how I’m finding my voice and if there’s not a voice like it, that’s great, but if there is that’s even better because it’s someone else to learn from. It’s ground that’s already been covered so I can choose to either cover similar ground because it’s meaningful to me or I can investigate where that person went and try to develop from there.

I try very hard to release the idea of perfection from my life because it just never will be - especially when working with a brass instrument where things only go wrong in quite spectacular fashion. I went to a conservatory that was really centered around this intense pursuit of perfection, so I struggle with that a lot, but I just try to let it go and make sounds that provide joy.

I don’t really like the notion of timelessness in music either. Where and when each person is when they create something is an inescapable part of their process, much like where and when the listener is an inescapable part of how they hear it. It’s all bound to the time it’s made and perceived in and that allows those relationships to change and develop rather than it being timeless and somehow existing in a vacuum.

I feel that the music I make feels a way to me when I make it (and often feels different when I listen) and will feel different to someone else, but that I don’t want to dictate that feeling to them.


 
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