Live Stream
Matt Wright laptop / samples
Matt Wright (UK, 1977)
Locked Hybrids World Premiere (2020) 30’
A producer, improviser, composer and several other things, Matt Wright knows how to pay attention. A renowned turntablist, he has brought sample culture to contemporary music, taking his obsession with small snippets of sound and applying it to what he writes for ensembles. Electronic music has taught him to extract and expand, to take something small and make it significant. He has also spent years sharing and collaborating, working with an endless list of horn players, drummers, solo artists and music groups.
Locked Hybrids is another chapter in Wright’s ever-expanding collaborative relationship with saxophonist Evan Parker. The artists have been improvising together for years, building on Trance Map, a recorded document of their time matching up Wright’s fractured electronics with Parker’s unique free jazz dialect. They were seen together last year closing hcmf// 2019 in Parker’s explosive ensemble improvisation, going all out with as many instruments and laptops as they could put on stage. This time, though, Wright works alone. Having trawled through hours of improvised material recorded from jam sessions with Parker, he has organized the saxophonist’s signature sound into new shapes, creating Locked Hybrids.
It’s an edit – an Evan Parker edit. ‘I’m making mirrors’, Wright says of the project. Through his lens, we experience an entire new side of the saxophonist, Wright approaching the project with the respect of a producer and the freedom of a DJ. He’s keen to point out that this is Parker’s music, but that we might notice something new in it by taking this sideways glance. Locked Hybrids is what it’s like to listen to listening.
Commissioned by hcmf//. This performance is a special remix of Locked Hybrids, an album released on Relative Pitch Records on Friday November 20. Matt Wright would like to thank Filipe Gomes at Arco Barco for his support.