Music For Aluminum Corn, by Matt Robidoux

Music For Aluminum Corn

by Matt Robidoux

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1.	Flute Forest 01:33	buy track
2.	Escalator From Dreamworld 03:24	buy track
3.	Shrimp Dance 03:22	buy track
4.	Bottle Garden 03:57	buy track
5.	Corn Straw Ball 02:20	buy track
6.	Green Corn Moongreen Corn Moon 04:58	buy track
7.	Green Corn 02:33	buy track
8.	Danse Des Crevettes 02:30	buy track
9.	Poisson D'Avril 05:05	buy track
10.	Cobwork 03:42	buy track
11.	Precita Morning 05:12	buy track

about

Out of the vast glistening soils of electronic music, nurtured in the resounding legacy of Mills College, and harbored in the experimentalism of the Bay Area music community, San Francisco-based artist and musician Matt Robidoux brings us their latest offering, Music for Aluminum Corn, a summation and celebration of accessible instrument building, engaging systems for improvisation, and new compositions designed with and for their new instrument, the corn synth (full name: Kinetically Operated Randomness Network)—a touch-controlled aluminum synthesizer shaped like two corn cobs.

Eleven tracks explore the versatility of the instrument as a leader, a contributor, and an instigator. Robidoux, a Mills College alum, reflects the powerful echo and artistic legacy of Mills in their design of the corn synth, modeling it after the Buchla 158, the original synthesizer used at the San Francisco Tape Music Center at the late Mills College. The instrument was invented during Robidoux’s residency at ACRE in Wisconsin, where they cast two corn cob moldings in aluminum. Movement and touch determine the parameters of pitch, velocity, and duration. This makes for an accessible instrument, at once charming and absurd, but also a powerful synthesis of Robidoux’s practice creating space for unrestricted musical improvisation and their engagement with Pauline Oliveros’ AUMI (Adaptive Use Musical Instrument).

In the wake of Mills closing, Robidoux’s continued work with a recurring cast of Mills alum and new Bay Area collaborators speaks volumes to its impact on Bay Area experimental music and electronic music at large. Matt invites these musicians into the performance space to make a warm, hypnagogic, and angular patchwork of fuzzy flute work, warbly electronic textures, crystalline rhythm, cloudbreak chimings of saxophone, and the sylvan wanderings of string quartet. Sound is captured, processed, and engaged through the corn synth, and each song breathes with evolving possibilities. The notated music seeds chance and surprises, and does not impose strict forms. It creates open, playful spaces, where improvisation embellishes and colors the music.

Personal field recordings are also blended into the mix, giving this music a sense of place and opening a musical fourth wall between synthesis and sensory. Be it a park, a field, or a rental in Montreal, this music is homegrown, composed in a joining of electronic and acoustic sounds. Track titles like “Shrimp Dance” and “Green Corn” or “Cobwork” are lighthearted allusions to running themes and musical developments, leaving room for the music to sound its own name and set its own mood. These motifs return with a different relationship to the corn synth, taking on new camouflage or donning new meaning in an altered soundscape.

Music for Aluminum Corn is Robidoux’s research and exploration of a new instrument’s capabilities, charged and conjured through Robidoux’s continued practice as an improviser, musician, and community builder. This music represents a patient and dynamic breadth of time, artistic growth, Matt becoming a parent, and accessible frontiers in improvisation, technology, and collaboration. The personal and intimate binds these factors into this succinct artwork, Music for Aluminum Corn—for the hungry ear and the joyful observer.

-Cody Putman

"...encourages rhythm and melody through playful phantasms and mysterious depths. The clarity and patience from this creative ensemble allow imagination to breath and drift." -Lost in a Sea of Sound

"...peaceful, serene, and utterly imaginative." -Post-Trash

"...truly fascinating." -The Daily Vault

Del Sol Quartet (Sam Weiser, Benjamin Kreith, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates) — strings (1,7,8,9,10)

Carrie Ford DeCunzo — french horn (6,10,11)

Cole Pulice — alto saxophone (6,10,11)

José Fernando Solares — alto saxophone (6,10,11)

Mitch Stahlmann — flute (1,6,10,11)

Michelle Lee — flute (1,6,10,11)

Jordan Glenn — drums (6,11)

Matt Robidoux — compositions, corn synth, fretless bass, guitars, xylophone

Recorded at home, Vintage Synth Museum LA, Montreal airbnb, Santo Recording Oakland

Mixed by Matt Robidoux

Mastered by Nathan Corder

(1,6,7,8,9,10,11) engineered by Zachary James Watkins at Santo Recording

Album artwork and design by Milo Moyer-Battick

Cover photo by Abby Banks

Tape photos by Chris Farstad and Liz Pavlovic

credits

released June 23, 2023

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Crash Symbols Morgantown, West Virginia

Est. 2010

"Your decency remains unimpaired, your virility unharmed, your person is free from any degrading submission, but in your hand is a tambourine." -Seneca

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