Matt Nelson: Lower Bottoms

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Matt Nelson (ss)

Label:

Tubapede Records

November/2014

RecordDate:

2013

Anyone currently flipping their wig over saxophonist Colin Stetson's flamboyant flights of extended technique will value the methods, if not all the madness, on Matt Nelson's debut solo LP. Both musicians expand the range of their instrument, pushing into realms unrecognisable with a meld of physical jerks and pedal-pushing process. The final piece here, ‘To Believe In What” wallows in the kind of self-propagating bellow familiar to anyone whose cupped an ear to Stetson's New History Warfare series, affording a languid meditation while incubating distinct Rorschach audio scenarios. But while Stetson builds his glacial vistas on pulsing rhythmic foundations, fuelled by circular breaths, Nelson's wailing is often less courteous; parping like a land-humping guppy captured in the midst of an electric storm. ‘Sunk Cost’ segregates hyperactive toot from shrill paroxysms of coruscating feedback, while the introduction of ‘Sworn Enemies’ comes across like a one-man Supersilent, hostile circuits huffing kettle steam over grousing cha-cha-cha. Most abrasive is the chatterbox stammer of the aptly-named ‘Motor Mouth’, which hijacks the oscillatory jousts of Nelson's saxophone quartet Battle Trance and brazenly bleeds them into the red.

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