MATTHIAS PUECH - ALPESTRES [OF016]

I first heard Matthias Puech while DJing alongside our mutual friend Gustave Evrard for The Wire’s Adventures in Sound and Music on Resonance FM. It was one of those rare but lasting moments of seeping in to a work for the first time. The then-unreleased piece was distinctly textured, energised by these micro-motioning particles that trace empty space before fading away, all the while maintaining a melodic vibrancy.

I contacted Matthias the next morning and within days we decided to release what would soon come to be Alpestres. Over the next few months, maybe even a year, Matthias revealed his awe of the mountains and the impact their harsh terrain has on its people and lifeforms; where the magic of extreme descents and ascents inform folklores and, in the cusp of nature’s extremities, preternatural experiences. Alpestres isn’t merely a love letter to the Alps, but more a conjuring of scientific revelation as a doorway into an abyss. Matthias, a scientist, reveals his delicate poetics at the teetering edge of calculating natures wonder. Do we encounter the expressions of the environment or the artist?  

As a field recordist myself I am drawn to Matthias’ twofold process. Although he approaches field recording as an ecologist might; observing, collecting, referencing and archiving – this methodological approach is only the entrance point into a greater presence, paralleled by his experimentation with modular synthesis. This pairing is both a prescribed and freely moving reflection of nature itself, like a brittle floe miraculously floating along a river.

Alpestres will be co-released on 9 November 2018 as a limited run cassette on Obsolete Future with an LP on Hands In The Dark. It was mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space. Artwork and design by Cécile Kojima. Original cover photograph from BnF, Société de Géographie.

Thank you to the Glasgow School of Art’s Caseroom and Photography Department for helping with the cassette printing.  

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