EUSKAL INTERPRETATZAILE BERRIAK VOL 1 - CD. ANTIFROST. 2005

"By reading the title it becomes obvious that this is a compilation of works by Basque sound artists raising a straightforward compositional guerilla against the commonplaces of "established" electroacoustic music. The record opens and ends with two "famous" names: Xabier Erkizia, his "Eskubete" a piercing attack to silence through minimal distorted frequencies, and Mattin, whose "Death to R'n'R" is a short punkish defragmentation of vinyl albums ending in a mess of white-noise saturation. But even more interesting are the tracks by Inigo Telletxea ("Untitled 1") Tzesne ("Elementos acustizado") and Edorta Izarzugaza ("Konpozizio objetiboa"), three soundscapes showing an alchemist-like will of intelligent investigation of aural memory, each one full of introspective textural dimensions, metastatic decompositions of shortwave abstract logic, hidden expansions like in a subdural hematoma. Here we can find the basics of what, in a not too distant future, could be labeled the "Basque school of individualist post-industrialism"...Just kidding folks - the music is so good, it speak for itself; give these guys a try and you won't be disappointed."

MASSIMO RICCI - TOUCHING EXTREMES
www.touchingextremes.org

"Of course you know Mattin, the laptop noise musician who travels the world to play his improvised noise works, and who runs the W.M./or label. He is a basque, not spanish. I don't know how how political he is about this, but I believe he is. On Antifrost, the Greek label whose headquarters are in Barcelona (and that is in Catalonia, to stay on the strict political side), there is now a compilation with five different composers from Basque origin. Mattin and Xabier Erkizia had releases before on
Antifrost, Tzesne on Drone Records and the other two (Inigo Telletxea and Edorta Izarzugaza) are new to me. Mattin plays the shortest track, 'Death To R'n'R'', a cut-up collage of rock sounds, with feedback noise. Erkizia also plays around with feedback variations, but moves into more glitch related sounds as the piece evolves. The other three are even more into microsound/glitch territories, but they all seem to be dealing with computer processing of feedback sounds. It seems as if the work of Mattin is now a whole school of noise musicians, at least in the Basque country. But each has it's own variation, and this makes this into quite a nice compilation."

(FdW) VITAL WEEKLY 500

Le second volet des nouveautés d'Antifrost amène le label à traverser la chaîne pyrénéenne, s'attachant à étudier quelques musiciens de langue et de culture basque… qui nous permet une petite digression sur cette langue, le basque, qui reste un mystère encore non élucidé, hors des schémas des langues indo-européennes, puisant son vocabulaire et ses constructions grammaticales dans le mystère des origines glossiennes. Ici les pièces, dans une pure esthétique Antifrostienne, mettent à mal le silence, sous couvert de haute fréquences, de sons filtrés,d'ondes sonores composées par Xabier Erkizia (Lesaka) Inigo Telletxea (bera), Tzesne (Errenteria) Edorta Izarzugaza (Bermeo) et Mattin (Getxo) qui insinuent à divers degrés, des éléments électro-acoustiques, expérimentaux, atmosphériques. Les titres parlés évoquent les extrapolations sonores d'un Jaap Blonk Exigeant et rude (comme un basque).

Chroniques des musiques actuelles #20 - www.pastis.org

”A new generation of Basque experimental musicians have been featured on a compilation CD. Some of them are known already, like Xabier Erkizia and Mattin, whereas the others can be discovered here. The three “newcomers" don't do a bad job. Iñigo Telletxea works with a minimal changing dark current or a fine-tuned sine wave. Tzesne presents a harsh machine-like soundscape, reminding of The Hafler Trio and Edorta Izarzugaza loves to play with tiny improv. sounds, put into or against an occasional dark setting. Both artists who already released their work on the same label, being Antifrost, have a different and more direct plus confronting approach. Xabier Erkizia combines peeps, static noise and high-pitched drilling to create a multi-layered noise collage, whereas Mattin presents a short punk-noise track, which does not fit the rest. He seems to be in this phase lately.”

Phoshor - NUMBER 118
http://www.xs4all.nl/~phosphor/next_issue.html