Matt John - Radio Self

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  • Like Aphex Twin, Matt John has a knack for twisting the most off-kilter sounds into fascinating microcosms. In both case, sustained listening can feel like you're staring for the movements of a strange and glistening insect. Your average Mr. John jam is a multi-tiered prism that seems to move in three directions at once, and the two joints offered on John's return to Perlon are no exception. John has logged so many hours doing the graveyard shift at Berlin's Bar 25, it's not surprising to see how his tunes reflect the milieu: a delirious nocturnal carnival, herky-jerk forests peopled by grimacing clowns and Monty Python ghosts. They're disorienting brain fuel, and as this is supposedly the Bar's last summer in operation, if Mr. John finds himself subsequently gigless, he surely has a promising future career in mind-expansion tapes. On "Radio Self," the task of opening the third eye becomes an explicit theme. After building layers of stumbling Sun Ra keyboard plonk over some bouncy midtempo minimal, John offers this missive: "listen to a song…you can find a way…the mind can be to you, and not you to the mind." Let that one sink in—maybe a sunrise pilgrimage to Bar 25 will bring the epiphany you seek. The track title seems to reflect John's sound advice: "Radio Self" reminds you of the artificiality of sensation: you may think you're hearing the world how it really sounds, but in fact that's only because your ears work that way—in fact they're really sophisticated radio receivers, that have to be properly tuned and maintained. So take this release as a kind of corresponding instruction manual, albeit the kind half-written in Japanese with several pictures missing. On the flip, the nonsense-word "sacing" is repeated ad infinitum over a crisp but monotonous groove, with the haunting insistence of a dream that lingers into waking life. It recedes into silence only to emerge again and again, then interrupted by clusters of manipulated vocals and chased by phantom re-boot noises. A new vocal, "pick me up!" is sung in a warbled croon reminiscent of Arthur Russell, whose own production style could be easily labeled a precursor to John's inspired weirdness. "Sacing" is perhaps not as essential as the a-side, but it's no less compellingly eccentric—as always, step into John's hall of mirrors and you're guaranteed to find something you've never heard before, and probably won't again.
  • Tracklist
      A Radio Self B Sacing
RA