Kaffe Matthews

Kaffe Matthews has been making and performing new music with digital gadgetry all over the world for the past ten years. From a background in violin, shopkeeping, Zoology, drumming, acid house engineering and a masters in Music Technology, she is best known for her live sampling performances of events and places: processing in installation, on stage, in galleries, clubs, concert halls, tents, churches, the outback, warehouses, or ambient tea rooms. The music is vast, sculpted into textural landscapes and vibrating granular technorhythms. On stage, she processes sound from carefully placed microphones and an occasional violin. Recently she has collaborated with Christian Fennesz, mimeo, Charles Hayward, Jon Rose, Pan-sonic, Butch Morris, Andy Moor (the EX), The BROOD, Neotropic (Riz Maslem), Hayley Newman, Kingsuk Biswas (Bedouin Ascent), artist Mandy McIntosh, Bruce Gilchrist and Joe Joelson. She has just returned from wired-up desert experiments with Australian wire music merchant Alan Lamb. She is currently working on an oversized sonic armchair for Chelsea and Westminster hospitals' exhibition, London. She also introduced and established the course Performance Technology to Dartington College of Arts (UK) and is now tutoring some violin and live electronic techniques at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. She recently worked as a director for Sonic Arts Network and the London Musicians Collective.

“With a further stride into more noisy rhythms and abstract cyber landscapes, Kaffe's music continues to transport and defy rules and regulations around sound and performance. Electronics are Kaffe's instrument, she still starts each show with no sound and grabs from what's there. The pieces crackle with digital tones and static, fizzing into pounding beats and cut to some hanging still space of beauty. She seems to have sourced some kind of wizard abuse of repetition to transport all senses. The tabletop violin a rare addition, Kaffe drives a wedge of life into that old laptop performance. check out her latest release, cd cecile and http://www.stalk.net/annetteworks for where you'll find her next.”