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The Sum of All Wisdom is dedicated to the idea that music IS the sums of all wisdom. Each episode features long-form investigative conversations with musicians, artists, and creative practitioners exploring sound, process, identity, and the work of building meaningful creative lives. We serve reflective musicians, thinkers, and culturally curious listeners seeking deeper conversations about art, memory, identity, meaning, and the wisdom embedded in creative lives. In other words, people just like you.
Our collaborations bring a fresh approach to talking about, discovering, and listening to music and musicians. Every artist--not just the legends--deserves a safe space to tell the stories behind their music, talk about their lives in their own creative ways, and touch listeners with their warmth, intelligence, and wisdom that's been hard-earned as a creative in sometimes chaotic world. The Sum of All Wisdom team is thrilled to partner with the incredible musical talent that is all around us, and bring inspiring and little-known stories to our growing, passionate, dedicated, thoughtful audience around the world.
The Sum of All Wisdom is a home for people who still believe music, conversation, and creative life can teach us how to live.
Scott Catey (00:00)
To get into things, Matthijs, what I'd love to sort of start with is a little bit of an introduction, right? So you, first of all, let me, let me explain the podcast a bit. Wisdom. I call it the sum of all wisdom because for me, music is the sum of all wisdom. This is a sort of mantra that I've had all my life. Cause I, I believe that music gives us things that no other
Matthijs Kouw (00:02)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Catey (00:26)
art form can give us and whether it's with words or without words, it does something ⁓ in a language that I think is universal in that sense. And so it's very humanist and it conveys something to everybody, even when it's challenging or confusing or sort of not familiar. think it brings us something. It gives us the ability to do something with our minds and our experience and ourself that other art forms don't
don't allow and just sort of regular day to day conversation often don't allow either. So the idea is that there are many paths to wisdom for me, and music takes us down those paths. And when we walk together on these paths, we approach something like wisdom and collectively, if we add it all together, right, that's the sum that I'm talking about the sum of all wisdom. So I think, for me, your your music, the art that you create is it
It offers me something that a lot of other, let's say genres of music don't offer. So that's kind of what I want to talk about today and ⁓ get into some of the details of what you as a composer, as a creator want to do for listeners and for yourself, but also what that does for me as a listener. So anyway, that's sort of where we're coming from. And so I'd love to start with...
Matthijs Kouw (01:45)
Fantastic.
Scott Catey (01:49)
a little bit of an introduction for you to tell us about who you are. So you position yourself on your bandcamp site, for instance, as an experimental musician, exploring the relationship between movement and stasis, which I think on its own is really interesting, right? How does music, how does a soundscape do that, those things for you? But let's start with ⁓ quote unquote, experimental music and what that means. So as a label, it seems to me it does some pretty heavy lifting, right? We've got Charles Ives in that.
In that context, we've got Pierre Schaefer, Brian Eno, James Teller, there's so many folks who are categorized in that sense as experimental. So for me, when I see that breadth of interestingness, right, it really means this is more of a position than a genre for me. So what I'd like to hear you tell us is what does experimental mean for you?
Matthijs Kouw (02:44)
That's a big question. No, I love it. ⁓ So there are different perspectives I could give in maybe a vain attempt to answer the question, but let's take ⁓ the experiments, the act of experimentation as a starting point. For me, it is very much exactly that. it is maybe it starts with an idea, maybe it starts with ⁓
Scott Catey (02:46)
you
Matthijs Kouw (03:13)
playing around with a new instrument that I just got, but the experimentation, kind of approaching things with a beginner's mindset, if you will. For me, that's really helpful to really dive into things, to start things out. So there's a certain, ⁓ I suppose, leveling the playing field gesture in there, if that makes sense. So we can all be musicians, we can all try to create something and it doesn't need to be very elaborate.
difficult. And especially in the last couple of decades, we've seen this is, you the fact that a lot of these tools are becoming a commodity. I think that this is a great thing, right? So this is fantastic. Now all of us can spend a couple of euros and start making music and start releasing music. I think that's fantastic. So that's maybe one answer, like the doing the experiments and then experimental as a label. So I don't take
Any genres for granted, see them as starting points to start thinking about how we can categorize sound and how we can categorize the experience of sound and the experience of making music. So for me, experimental opens up this whole width of different perspectives. ⁓ Yeah, so that's probably how I would answer your question, but it's a big one,
Scott Catey (04:40)
seems like a big one. There's a lot going on in sort of quote unquote experimental music, as I said, but the thanks for that. I like the experimental in the sense of experiments, right? Experimenting with sound and where that takes you. So you and I have known each other for almost two decades now, right? We met in about 2009, doing academic stuff very different from where both of us are now. ⁓ Different
Matthijs Kouw (04:46)
Hmm.
Yep.
Different life, yeah.
Scott Catey (05:10)
totally different lives, right?
So, but in that time, I think the first thing I heard of when we, sorry, let me not get ahead of myself. When we first met, we were talking about the music that you were doing even back then. And I think the first album of yours I heard was Transductions, right? From early in the 2000s. And from there, I followed your progression through ⁓ your work with Mens and you've had a number of collaborators over the years.
And I'd really love to hear about it. For me, I, I feel, I guess, the development of your, of what you produce and the influence of the folks that you're working with. But I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about your own sense of the evolution of what you do.
Matthijs Kouw (06:04)
That's a great question. in some sense, I find myself doing the same things over and over again. But there is a certain evolution in there. And I remember in the chat we had before this recording that we were talking about, what's kind of your history with music? did you end up in this scene listening to this music?
Scott Catey (06:30)
Hmm.
Matthijs Kouw (06:33)
Yeah, so in an attempt to give some sense of where did this all come from and where is it going, I'm not sure. There is this sort of insatiable hunger to listen to music, to explore music, where can it go? And of course, there is a certain preference that I have in the things that I listen to and the things that I create. So perhaps that is sort of the driving force, the true will, if you will, behind this. ⁓
I'm not really sure how to articulate that, but I think that's part of the mystery, part of the fun. That there is a certain drive towards something, although I can't really explain it quite well. I was thinking about all kinds of smart deconstructivist remarks to make about our chat, because it's essentially also a bit of a biography or autobiography. There was a time when I didn't really do that. I was like, OK.
People want to interview me about my music. I think that's really weird. But of course you can't really escape, know, giving some biography, even silence is a form of biography. So insert favorite Jacques Derrida quote here. I don't know, but I'm happy with the chat. ⁓ But where is it all going? I really don't know. I started listening to music.
With a big preference for the more extremer side of things, I listened to a lot of metal, grindcore. The louder the better. At some point discovered noise, so of course Masami Akita/Merzbow. ⁓ And then through ⁓ my various visits to record stores in Amsterdam, back when there were still record stores, there are now just a handful of them.
People are still persisting, which I love of course, but there were many, many more back in the 90s because that's kind of the era we're talking about. And I would make this round that would take me about maybe half a day along multiple record stores and each of them would have some representation of the outer fringes. And at some point people start referring me to someone who was doing this mail order company.
called Phosphor back in Amsterdam back in the day. ⁓ And I simply phoned him up because he had a website, but I just called him and I was like, okay, I hear you're selling interesting music and I cannot drop by. And he was like, so Paul is his name. He was like, yeah, sure, come on over. So I went to his place, listened to a lot of music and bought a lot of music ⁓ at the spot. ⁓
kind of a gateway into ⁓ even more experimental stuff. And then at some point I became involved with the people from Staalplaat which is a record store and label also based in Amsterdam back then. We're doing a lot of weird stuff like noise, contemporary classical, ⁓ also some rhythmic stuff like industrial, but also techno, more experimental kinds of techno.
And I just got really into it. I started doing their radio show every Tuesday night on Amsterdam pirate radio station Radio 100, which was a perfect excuse to go through all the new releases and bring some of them to the studio and start mixing things. Yeah, and at some point became involved with ⁓ making music myself. So I had a computer, I had some external gear and started playing around basically.
where all of this is going. I'm not really sure. ⁓ Some people say that sometimes you find people making the music they don't really have themselves but would like to listen to. maybe also that applies to writers. You're writing the book that you can't find on your shelves. I'm not sure if it's that deliberate. ⁓ For me it's just something that comes into existence. So I start playing around, I start experimenting if you will and then stuff happens and at some
point you have to say, okay, this is starting to sound like something. I kind of like it. It's time to finish it or release it or whatever. And this process can take many, many years. So sometimes I make something, I put it away for well, up to years and I rediscover it and I start playing around with it and then it gets finished in a few weeks. So it's very indeterminate, very unpredictable.
Scott Catey (11:18)
Indeterminacy seems to be kind of a thing for experimental music, wherever on the spectrum that you've sort of depicted, wherever you fall in there, indeterminacy seems to be an important part of the soundscape, right?
Matthijs Kouw (11:34)
That's another a great question. I find that a lot of the stuff that I do is...
almost architectural, so it's like creating spaces for people to dwell in. And in my collaboration with Phil McQuire, he's a dear friend of mine, who I really met through music online, which was great. But he's a very dear friend of mine and I like his work a lot. I really feel privileged to be working with him.
But with Phil, this architectural metaphor became very explicit. So we were basically creating these spaces for people to dwell into, to listen and to spend some time in. And that works quite well. And a lot of it is quite indeterminate. So I lay out these compositions, I do all the mixing manually, so there's not a lot of automation going on there.
But yeah, even still when I listen back to some of the pieces that I made, they surprise me. It's not something I can really control ⁓ because of all the layers, the different layers interacting. ⁓ So I think it's quite indeterminate in that sense.
Scott Catey (12:54)
Your latest release is called Transversal. And I was listening to that as know, for prep for the conversation today. And Asymptotic stands out for me, especially on that record. think first of all, the whole thing, the whole record itself, I think is really wonderful. And it does, why I think it's wonderful is for me, offers as you getting to the indeterminacy. It offers me.
Matthijs Kouw (13:16)
Thank you.
Scott Catey (13:23)
as a listener, kind of forensic invitation to listening, right? So there's a soundscape that, as you say, I should dwell in for a moment. I really feel like I inhabit that record when I'm listening to it. And so what that does for me, the experience of the soundscape is it draws me in. So I'm paying attention to the texture, right? The layers, the forms of sound that are in it.
And rather than what's coming next, I'm thinking about what's happening now. What is it that I'm not just hearing, but feeling. So Transversal, the whole record does that for me, but asymptotic is, it feels magical in that sense. And for me to referencing back to Derrida and and deconstructionists, I get a sense of destabilization, right? So the sound is destabilized as an object, right? There's more than I can identify as a ⁓
Matthijs Kouw (14:04)
Great.
Scott Catey (14:19)
as a thing I'm listening to in that record. But at the same time, it destabilizes the boundary between us, right? So I'm not just hearing, this is the dwelling and the inhabiting of the music. So I feel the embodied sense of being in that record as I'm listening to it. And it's even more intense in headphones, right? If it's ambient in the room, that's one thing, but on headphones and sort of living the experience, it's really a powerful record to do that.
Matthijs Kouw (14:34)
Hmm.
Scott Catey (14:47)
And so the passage, not just indeterminacy, but the passage of time becomes like, I don't know how long I've been here doing this. I feel it could be minutes, it could be seconds. So the experience for me, the subjectivity of that record is something I think.
very unfamiliar, but in a good way. ⁓ I can reflect on myself in a new way because of the music that you've produced in this record. So that's the kind of thing that I think your music brings to me and always has done since the first time I heard it. ⁓ So enough about me, right? solipsistic experience of my listening.
Matthijs Kouw (15:26)
Yeah.
Scott Catey (15:32)
What do you as a composer, a creator, what do you want listeners of your music to do with the content that you produce, the music you produce?
Matthijs Kouw (15:33)
Mm-hmm.
First of all, thank you for the kind words. It always makes me very shy when people compliment me about my music. But I'm very happy that it resonates. No pun intended. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. That sounds really good. It is kind of what I want to achieve if there is such a thing. So I'm quite happy if people...
tell me after listening to my music, like, okay, this leads me to some kind of reconsideration of what music is or what musical experience is like or how I perceive sounds or whatever. So I kind of like this effect that you're like, okay, so maybe there are different kinds of music or maybe the orchestra is not, you know, a set of instruments, but the entire world can be an orchestra. So basically this is where we find Pierre Chafer, of course, making his breakthrough work.
Scott Catey (16:33)
Thank you.
Matthijs Kouw (16:38)
recording steam engines and whatnot, which of course fantastic. Now the entire world has become an orchestra because of the tape recorder. ⁓ But to really, I mean, that's also part of what experimentation is about. So it's kind of look for the boundaries and stretch them and maybe fold things into themselves or refold them, unfold them, if you will. So I'm very happy if that really resonates with people. And perhaps there is some kind of
Scott Catey (16:41)
you
Matthijs Kouw (17:07)
There is some kind of trajectory there, perhaps. ⁓ So if you look at most of my work, I think is about inviting people to have this kind of experience. So what is time? What is music? What is my relationship to that experience of listening to music? For me, it's more like an atmosphere. It's more like setting a vibe, and then inviting people in there and inviting them to explore.
⁓ So yeah, I hope that kind of answers the question.
Scott Catey (17:45)
It feels, your music feels to me very non-fictional, right? Beethoven, let's say Beethoven or any of the big romantic or Baroque composers, they're painting a world, an idealist world, right? For sure. But they're painting a world that for me doesn't exist, right? It's not, to joy is great music. It can be inspirational, but the...
Matthijs Kouw (17:53)
Yeah.
Scott Catey (18:09)
If I say there's a one-to-one relationship between the world and that piece of music, I'm saying something that I don't think is true, right? It feels good. It sounds good. It's a lovely piece, but it's non-fictional in that. It's fictional in that sense. Yours feels not just because there's, you know, world sounds that you bring in, but it feels non-fictional. It feels like you are painting a world that is realer in that sense ⁓ to me than,
Matthijs Kouw (18:23)
Yep.
Yeah.
Scott Catey (18:37)
you know,
sort of orchestral music. So I wonder if, that part of your goal? Have you, do you think in those terms when you compose?
Matthijs Kouw (18:48)
It's more about things I don't really think about when I start making music. for me, it's not about capturing a very specific mood or ⁓ writing a song about a lover or something. I mean, I respect people that do that. It's just not what I do with music. ⁓ For me, it's more about finding things I can't really express in any other way. And that also leads to another boundary that's worth...
experimenting with, you will, which is the boundary between, you know, my sort of, am I this orchestra waving his baton or is something else going on? And of course I am tempted to think the latter ⁓ because I am not, it's maybe a cliche, so yeah, but I'm not fully in control. It's something that happens, something that emerges.
something that is often also in the creative process ⁓ stretched over time. So I don't really have the same experience of certain sounds that I've made a few years back and yet I can start working again on them tomorrow. So even the creative process is durational in itself.
So the experience of time becomes something more qualitative, right? Which is something you described very nicely. And that is not deliberate, only to a certain extent. So I see myself more as a kind of a producer, engineer kind of person, maybe an architect, if you will. So I set certain conditions in which things can happen. And I'm 100 % okay with this. I think it's quite beautiful because it's a form of communion.
It's communion with the creative process through music. And I feel very privileged to be part of that.
Scott Catey (20:46)
And your distribution is, are you on other platforms besides Bandcamp?
Matthijs Kouw (20:53)
There are some odd bits here and there on Spotify. I don't really like Spotify. That's an understatement. So whenever people tell me like, are you on Spotify? My immediate thought is, okay, why do you hate musicians? Because we all noticed the business model of Spotify is not very sustainable for the average creative person.
But okay, I respect the fact that people want to get to know my music. But then I get into this interesting conversation like, okay, are you aware of Bandcamp? And they're like, well, not really. And then I explain to them a little bit like, okay, so what is Bandcamp about? And what's kind of the business model there? And how does it allow you to offer physical releases apart from digital releases? And you get into this really interesting conversation about, okay,
How do we distribute music? How do we appreciate that as a society? And how has technology shaped that? And these are questions that people often tend to ignore because I think a lot of art forms have a higher reputation, if you will, than music. think music is by most people still considered to be entertainment. But it's high art. I really agree with you there 100%. It's high art.
perhaps the highest art form, if you would ask me, but that's of course highly subjective. But it is art and as such, it has not really gotten the appreciation that I think it deserves, which is unfortunate. But there are of course a lot of interesting platforms and now a lot of experimental music is becoming more mainstream and people see like weird techno acts at festivals. So they're like, okay, this is interesting. So I think it's definitely improving a lot, which is fantastic.
But there's still a lot of work to be done, I think. ⁓ I'm not sure if I answered your question, by the way. I kind of lost track there.
Scott Catey (22:57)
That was great. I really love hearing you talk about Bandcamp. And in addition to the electronic distribution, you also release on cassettes often. And I'd love to talk again about your rationale for using cassettes. It seems like there might be not quite the same resurgence of vinylists have, but there is some return to cassettes in some instances. I'd to hear you talk about that.
Matthijs Kouw (22:59)
Okay.
yeah, right. Yeah.
Yeah, it's resurgence from the cassette culture that was quite active ⁓ in the Netherlands and also the United States and many, many other countries. But ⁓ there was a time where people would distribute music through ⁓ mail ⁓ by selling each other cassettes. So it's kind of a riff on that. It's also partly related to the fact that distributing cassettes is a lot cheaper than distributing vinyl. If you look at the footprint, I think
Cassettes are worse for the environment than vinyl, if I'm not mistaken. But still, you do what you can. Being a perfectly moral person is perhaps impossible, but you do what you can. But there's definitely a resurgence of cassette because people want to have this physical object that represents the music.
think part of it is a reaction to having this multitude, this plethora of music available. Just by snapping your fingers you can explore many different genres and there is maybe a sense of overload there. But it's also a nice way to support artists and to give a bit of money back. Because yes, there are people that are investing time and money.
into making this music, which we sometimes tend to forget. But I mean, yeah, that goes without saying, but a lot of, know, processes of production are very far removed from how people consume them. So music is just another example of that.
But I see it as a way to give something back to the community, to give people this nice object that they can play with nice artworks. do spend a lot of time when I release a cassette myself, which I've done numerous times, ⁓ I spend quite a bit of time on the artwork, improving the artwork and really making sure that people get a nice piece of art. ⁓
And then there are many people like me who release music on CD, vinyl, cassette. It's very much DIY. And people often barely break even on these releases. And yet we still persist. We keep on doing it, which I think is a thing of beauty. You know, there's this insatiable drive, this insatiable hunger towards, you know, let's continue. We gotta go on.
Scott Catey (26:01)
driven by something other than earning, right? think that that seems to be also part of the ethos of the Bandcamp model is a place to do what you need to do in the sense as a musician without necessarily caving into all the capitalist overtures. Pardon the pun.
Matthijs Kouw (26:04)
Yes.
Exactly.
Yep.
No, I think that's great.
Scott Catey (26:26)
⁓ cassettes also bring a certain I don't know what to call it Matthijs help me out here certain additional aesthetic to the listening they have their own sound playing in the tape hiss and that sort of thing is that factor in your to your use of them
Matthijs Kouw (26:42)
Yep.
It does. So it adds something. It can't even change the point, but it adds this kind of ferric quality, kind of like this dusty quality, which has to match the music. There are things that are sometimes released on tape that could have been released on CD preferably, but yeah, maybe that's another interesting avenue to explore because a lot of people are now releasing music on vinyl. Vinyl is now...
de facto ⁓ most popular format. after digital, I'm not sure about the statistics. But for many kinds of music CDs are much better suited, so I find that a little bit frustrating sometimes. ⁓ But yeah, people seem to love their vinyl.
So, so, yeah.
Scott Catey (27:36)
What's the frustrating
part for releasing on CD?
Matthijs Kouw (27:42)
⁓ But I don't think people do it enough. So I think CDs are kind of brushed off as this obsolete format, but that's exactly how we thought about vinyl a few decades back. So I think CDs will have their resurgence too. And I still release music on CD. It's just not something that labels tend to do. So it's something that I have to ask for sometimes, but it does sometimes better fit the music. So if the music is quite... ⁓
quite detailed and if the qualities of tape take away too much of the details then you might want to consider putting things out on CD. So one of the tracks that I sent you, the Irradiance track, I think is perfectly suited for CD. It's quite detailed, the sounds are quite crisp, quite bright, so I think CDs are much better suited for that kind of music.
Scott Catey (28:39)
Let's talk about those tracks, Matthijs. You sent me three sections of music to use for the episode. So tell me about Irradiance. That track is, I think it's quite something.
Matthijs Kouw (28:43)
Sure.
Thank you. ⁓ Yeah, back in the day, ⁓ I ⁓ got in touch with my friend Sietse from Moving Furniture Records. ⁓ Shout out to Moving Furniture Records in Amsterdam. ⁓ I think we met back in 2008 for the first time. And he was also, he was always bothering me like, okay, man, please send me a demo because I really like your music and why don't you release something on my label?
I was working on something but I couldn't really get it done. ⁓ So it took me a long time to send him a demo and then I did send him a demo back in 2017, maybe early 2018. And he really liked it and released it which became my album Obscurem per Obscureus, ⁓ which is still one of my all-time favorites. I spent a lot of time making it but ⁓ that was my
First, real serious solo release, let's call it that. And I'm very grateful for that opportunity. And then through Sietse I was able to release other music. So my collaborations with Radboud Mens for example. And at some point Sietse organized a compilation in which the people from the Moving Furniture roster were invited to collaborate with each other. And I was matched with Gagi Petrovic. ⁓
that correctly and Gagi and I created some source material together and ⁓ each made our own take on that so the album is actually a double CD with one of the CDs being mine and the other CD being his which I quite like as we did very different things with the source material ⁓ and Iradience was one of the experiments that worked out quite well ⁓ if I may say so myself so I'm very happy with that track.
Scott Catey (30:48)
I find it really interesting that you create a joint record essentially from same source material drawn out in two different ways. Tell me about that process. How did you guys work together? What was the source material?
Matthijs Kouw (31:04)
It's been a long time so I don't really remember. think we just went through our hard drives and collected some things we were working on then but weren't really finished. So we shared, I think, about half an hour of source material each, more or less, and then just said, okay, this is sort of the shared vocabulary. Let's see where we can take this.
And I'm not really sure how Gagi makes music. I think he ⁓ uses a lot of interesting software tools, but I did a lot of work with the modular, so the modular synthesizer and some plugins. I'm a big fan of the GRM suite, the Grup Recherche Musicale, originally founded by Pierre Shaefer also has a small section creating plugins for audio. ⁓
transformation audio effects and I use those a lot and at some point something emerges like Irradiance.
Scott Catey (32:11)
step.
At some point, something emerges. I think we need to unpack that, Matthijs. What's the process? What is it that happens in that emergence? There's a final output, something that you say, this is good enough to put on a record and release, but getting there seems like, it seems like you put a lot of thought and time and experimentation into that. So can you draw that out for me?
Matthijs Kouw (32:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, sure. A lot of it comes down to spending time in studios or creating this environment in which things come into existence. I make different edits of the same file. I make edits of edits and then edits of edits of edits. And at some point you've mangled the source material to such an extent that it can become difficult to recognize.
which is perfectly fine, course, if you ask me. But you can take it in so many directions. And that's also part of the struggle with electronic music is in terms of the creative process, I find that a little bit daunting sometimes that you can take it in so many different directions. So you have to kind of limit yourself. But I didn't really impose any limits on myself for that record. I just started playing around with these sounds and Gagi made some really beautiful sounds. I had some interesting sounds myself.
At some point I started laying out these sounds in different tracks and started thinking about, how could this evolve? What would be a nice narrative structure for this piece? And then this leads, of course, to another question. So what kind of story are you trying to tell? I don't know. It's not something like, okay, I saw two blackbirds in a tree when I was taking a walk the other day and it reminded me of blah, blah, blah. It's something completely different. It's much more about...
The sounds, it's much more about how I experience the sounds and how the sounds match with each other and how I could use them to make a certain mood.
I can't really describe it in any other way than through the music.
Scott Catey (34:20)
The narrative that you described so feels to me like it's a musical narrative. The sounds, in a sense, are equivalent to words. The story that you end up with is the dwelling, the indwelling, maybe of the listener in the music and not per se some one-to-one. I'm describing something in the world.
Matthijs Kouw (34:41)
Yes, to say that sounds produce a certain mood is maybe already going too far. for me, it's something that's a little bit beyond how we commonly describe sensations. It's more about...
very very personal associations ⁓ that go beyond logos perhaps.
So I can't really put it into words. That's not an attempt to avoid giving an answer. It's just, I really struggle to put it into words. ⁓ But it's also not about that. For me, it's not about that. So for me, it's much more about, okay, where do the sounds lead themselves? Or how could I create some kind of dialogue between two different elements, for example.
Scott Catey (35:13)
Yeah, I understand.
Matthijs Kouw (35:30)
Some sounds are very dense, some sounds are more playful, some sounds are more metaphysical, other sounds are very much rooted. But even in the creative process I don't think in those terms, I just listen to the sound. If that makes sense.
Scott Catey (35:49)
think it does. You said, in a sense, it transcends the logos, which is, I'm sorry to go here Matthijs but is there a spiritual or a theological aspect to what you produce?
Matthijs Kouw (36:03)
I think so.
I think so.
Scott Catey (36:07)
Can you ⁓
tell me more about that?
Matthijs Kouw (36:11)
⁓ Well, as you know, I like to read and ⁓ I've been reading a lot on negative theology for the past year and a half. I'm not sure if I understand it. I'm not sure if understanding it is the point. ⁓ But this whole idea of ⁓ perhaps it's more about negative theology or apophaticism. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. ⁓
It's really about describing God in theology, right? ⁓ Up to the point where you notice that language is starting to break down. So we don't really have the words to put this, to express this, to represent this or whatever. So perhaps that's kind of the spiritual motif here. But for sure, it's about ⁓
Scott Catey (36:51)
and
Matthijs Kouw (37:10)
about moods or feelings that point to something larger than myself. This is also captured in the process itself. it's not just about me. It's never just about me. So hence the kind of hesitation to engage in autobiography. But still, mean, there is something going on there. Yeah.
Scott Catey (37:36)
Apophatic ⁓ makes me think of Parmenides, right? can never, language is never commensurate with Nothing or the unknown in that sense. If there's, if there's anything beyond the something that we experience in this world, we have no capacity to understand it or describe it in that sense. So that feels very, I don't know, honest to me in a sense.
Matthijs Kouw (37:48)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and also shout out to all the Dennis Turner fans out there. Darkness of God is a fantastic book about apophaticism and perhaps it's about that, about this sort of luminous darkness, if you will. So at some point we encounter a situation where we can't really put it into words anymore, but that's perfectly fine because something else can shine through, although we can never probably really articulate it too well.
But there are maybe ways to relate ourselves to it.
Scott Catey (38:37)
music being first among those.
Matthijs Kouw (38:37)
so
Well, if you ask me, Yeah, yes. But it can be done in other ways, perhaps. Yeah, sure. Why not? Drawing or painting or... That doesn't really matter. But for me, the vehicles with the music always has been. Yeah.
Scott Catey (38:44)
Exactly.
Maybe, you know, in a sense it's creativity. This is what brings us closest to, I think all of the rest of the world and whatever lies beyond the world, right? I think our, our creativity is the stretch of our imagination and what's possible. ⁓ Let's talk a little bit more about the tracks that you sent over, Matthijs. We'll put them in the, I'll drop one in the center of this. Tell me about ⁓ the piece that you want to come into the center and
Matthijs Kouw (39:07)
Mm-hmm.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Catey (39:28)
⁓ I think it's something in the middle of a piece that you sent previously. Is that correct? Tell me more about that.
Matthijs Kouw (39:35)
Correct.
Yeah, correct. So ⁓ I sent you a track from a tape that I did for important drone records. ⁓ A label curated by a Polish gentleman in Spain who I chatted with quite a bit back in the Covid days. I'm not sure how he's doing, but... ⁓
But really lovely guy who ran this label Important Drone Records, which is kind of a joke, because there is also a label called Important Records, which is indeed releasing quite important music, I would say. ⁓ But he was kind of making a joke on that by saying, OK, there's also important drone music that's also...
⁓ that also deserves some of our precious time and attention. ⁓ basically I just send him an email like, okay, I really like your label. I really like what you're doing. He did like these very limited edition cassettes, 30 copies of each release, no represses. So I was like, okay, who is this guy? I really have to get to know him. And I just sent him a message and he was very friendly and we started chatting about philosophy of language and music and whatnot. ⁓
At some point I sent him a demo and the demo was inspired by the work of Gilbert Simondon, is a French philosopher of technology amongst other things. Passed away back in 1989, I believe, but pretty much a contemporary of Gilles Deleuze, who is another philosopher I've enjoyed quite a bit through my career.
And Simondon talks about this notion of meta-stability. Let me just pull up the Bandcamp page so I can give you the correct quote because the album is titled Meta-Stabilities. So not meta-stability, but meta-stabilities, plural. ⁓ Where meta-stability can be defined as a stable state of a dynamic system other than its state of least energy.
systems in a metastable state are charged with potentials. And all of the pieces are of an equal length, so they're all 22 and a half minutes, which tries to make the point that, okay, there's no beginning, no end. are basically like a snapshot of a complex system. We are studying that system for this duration. ⁓
And the pieces are all an attempt to kind of have this mood of a system trying to work out its different configurations, its different potentialities. So sometimes there are things that emerge very briefly and then disappear, all against the backdrop of a pretty sustained tone. But on top of that, there's all this stuff happening and even the foundational layer is shifting a little bit at some point. So it's my take on
Scott Catey (42:20)
Mm-hmm.
Matthijs Kouw (42:41)
Simondon perhaps a bit of systems theory in the form of music. And looking back at that, so I made these pieces about six years ago, just before the pandemic started. ⁓
Yeah, it was kind of a way to grapple with philosophical concepts in the form of musical composition.
And I quite like the no beginning, no end angle. So it's like, it's just this framed, this snapshot of something more dynamic. So you mentioned exploring the relationship between movement and stasis. I think that really emerges quite well in these pieces.
Scott Catey (43:23)
don't want to so there's it's very now to talk about quantum things. But the description of a complex system with no beginning and no end feels like there's a quantum sense in there. There's a I take out of it something different than you take out of it because whatever we quote unquote observe in the moment is different for each one of us. So I'm wondering if there's a not to be banal
about that, but is there a kind of sense of that in the music that you're talking about?
Matthijs Kouw (44:02)
Quantum mechanics, you mean?
Scott Catey (44:05)
Yeah, the observer issue.
Matthijs Kouw (44:09)
Yeah, a little bit. ⁓ There are different ways you can experience ⁓ the music and for me, ⁓ as stated before, right? So even if I revisit some of the piece myself, I find something new and I often get the response from people like, I find something new every time, which I think is fantastic. it's about, if you look at this space that you could dwell in, you can do different...
can walk an infinite amount of routes through the same architecture, through the same building. ⁓ So I quite like that people walk away with that. And there's also this kind of unanimous experience that people have like, okay, I hear more people giving me the same description. So I think that's quite nice. ⁓ But of course, the observer comes into the experience and ⁓ yet almost goes without saying.
⁓ So how you come into the piece with the expectations that you have is kind of a no-brainer, but also in the experience itself the density of the music is sometimes quite high, so there are different paths, different trajectories you can follow.
Scott Catey (45:30)
think experimental music and drone music especially are unfamiliar for a lot of people. This is not a go to category for a lot of musical folks. So I wonder if you can
hypothetically, you're on the street, you meet somebody who doesn't really know or like experimental music, or they think they don't. What's your what's the conversation? How do you bring them in to say, give it a try?
Matthijs Kouw (46:09)
That's a great question.
So for me, if I listen to this kind of music... ⁓
it does give me this sense of communion. I think we kind of, you know, we set off this sort of spiritual ⁓ trajectory in our conversation. ⁓ for me, that makes a lot of sense. So how can you spend some time with this music, with this sound? I think that's maybe the best way to...
to put it. It's kind of meditative without, you you're not sitting on a cushion or whatever, you're not counting, you're not focusing on the tip of your nose, for example, but it is very meditative in the best sense of the word. So ⁓ how would I incentivize a person? How would you like to spend some time with music that can reconfigure what you think about yourself, about music and about space and time?
That could be my pitch perhaps.
Scott Catey (47:15)
I think that's a perfect pitch.
and bring it home a little bit, Matthijs. The third piece that you sent that we'll use to close the podcast interview. Tell me about that one.
Matthijs Kouw (47:30)
Yeah, that's from the Transversal tape. ⁓ Not the penultimate piece, but I think track four. ⁓ It's just one of the more recent things I've been doing, which is kind of similar ⁓ to stuff that I worked on at the time of Metastabilities, for example. But I think it's a nice nod to where I'm taking things now. ⁓
I am working on something new. I just got in touch with Thomas Rosen from the Ruhrgebiet, the Ruhr area within Western Germany, which is actually quite close to me. So can meet Thomas after like an hour, spending an hour on the Autobahn. ⁓ So he lives quite close by and we made some recordings back in February, which I'm now processing.
starting to get into shape, so it's starting to crystallize if you will in the form of a new album. And then there's also some new solo material that I'm very slowly finishing, so it's going quite well. But yeah, it will be kind of adjacent to the Transversal track.
Scott Catey (48:51)
Is there a field component to your work, Matthijs? Do you record nature, record industrial sounds, record the environment? What does that look like for you?
Matthijs Kouw (49:00)
I do, although not that much, but I do record sounds. Living in the Netherlands, it's quite hard to find a clean recording or to make a clean recording of something happening in nature, which is fine. But what I usually end up doing is working with contact microphones or recording objects. So a way to...
to avoid all the traffic noise or planes flying overhead is by using contact microphones because then you just catch the vibrations of objects. And also I do a lot of recordings of objects in the studio. But field recording is another fantastic discipline that I've not really dipped my toe in yet. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, I'm not sure, but there are amazing artists out there like... ⁓
This Japanese gentleman Toshiya Tsunoda who makes recordings of harbours or reverbing plates. It's the most beautiful music you've ever heard. It's fantastic. And it's just like a person with a microphone standing in a harbour recording things. Maybe he's doing a little bit of processing, I'm not sure, but it's fantastic.
⁓ And then there are also people like, ⁓ what's his name again? Marc Namblard, is, I think he is a forest or he's doing like nature protection. And he made this beautiful CD with, I believe with his brother, which is just nature sounds like recordings of small rivers.
branches creaking in the wind and things like that. It's absolutely stunning, yeah.
Scott Catey (50:52)
sounds good. Nice. Good to listen to. I'm thinking about my studio as I it's just a room in my house, which I've kind of arranged to be a little bit like a studio doesn't have soundproofing barely has acoustic dampening, but neighbors on all sides. And I'm thinking about what you just said hard to get a clean recording of something natural in the case you were talking about, but it's hard to get a clean recording of
Matthijs Kouw (50:53)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Scott Catey (51:22)
conversation in this point because cars, dogs, cats, people coughing on the sidewalk, all kinds of sound gets in here. And for the podcast part of my, you know, I've had a couple of episodes that ⁓ I recorded on Zoom, ⁓ just because and Zoom compresses audio, there's a whole different sort of relationship with audio between this platform that I use Riverside now and Zoom.
And so cleaning up Zoom content is much different than cleaning up Riverside content. And I notice how hard it is to get clean audio, even just trying to have a conversation. I can like, and outside, I did an Instagram reel of my apple tree, right? Because it's, planted it last year, it's growing nicely, it's blooming and that sort of thing. And I just wanted to show that.
Matthijs Kouw (51:57)
Hmm.
Scott Catey (52:22)
And it was all lawnmower noise. It's just like, how do you get at a harbor or in the out of doors or anywhere clean audio recording of just natural sounds? Can such a thing actually exist? I think is my, where my head goes to.
Matthijs Kouw (52:25)
Yeah
⁓ Maybe that's not the point. ⁓ Maybe the soundscape is populated by Beautiful Birdsong and Leafblowers simultaneously. ⁓ It reminds me of I do the occasional DJ set here in ⁓ close to where live in the Waaghals record store in Nijmegen, which is...
one of the better record stores in the Netherlands, if you ask me. Friendly folks, good collection, perfect for crate digging, there's a lot of secondhand vinyl as well. And occasionally I do a little bit of DJing there and they asked me to do like this soundscape, ambient soundscape set a few weeks ago. Which is nice because I did the kind of relaxing, kind of soothing sounds that people associate with ambient music.
but also kind of harsher field recordings of... For example, I used this or I played this CD from Alan Lamb, who sadly passed away recently, who would record these old telegraph wires in the Australian desert with, I believe, contact microphones or something similar. But it's quite noisy, but that's also a soundscape, right? That's also part of our ambient, the sounds that surround us.
Scott Catey (54:02)
Mm-hmm.
Matthijs Kouw (54:11)
So yeah, doesn't always have to be a soothing, pleasant experience. also about embracing sound in its full width. Maybe we don't have to aestheticize it that much all the time.
Scott Catey (54:24)
or assume that some things leaf blowers are noise and birdsong is something, as you say, more aesthetic than that.
Matthijs Kouw (54:34)
Yeah, they did. Yeah.
Scott Catey (54:34)
me we're trained to
exclude the noise what we understand to be noise from you know the appropriate soundscape or the soundscape that I want perhaps so yeah that's a point Matthijs I like that
Matthijs Kouw (54:39)
Yeah.
Yup.
Scott Catey (54:48)
which is not to say I want more leaf blowers.
Matthijs Kouw (54:51)
No, no, no. I hate leafblowers. You can just leave the leaves on the ground. It's no problem.
Scott Catey (54:58)
Exactly, right.
Matthijs Kouw (54:59)
Yeah, it's
good mass for the animals.
Sorry, go ahead.
Scott Catey (55:05)
during this
music live ⁓ is that when you're performing a DJ set, it from CD? Do you use cassettes? Do you use LPs? Is it computer generated? How do you actually present a live performance of this?
Matthijs Kouw (55:21)
Yeah, when I DJ I try to do it as many channels as possible at the same time. I would have... Usually I have like two record players, two CD players and I try to do two, three, hopefully four layers at the same time usually. That's kind of my approach. it often works quite well if I may say so myself, but it's a little bit uncontrollable which keeps it fun.
Scott Catey (55:34)
Thank
Matthijs Kouw (55:47)
But that's just the DJ part. For the live performance, I tend to use a laptop in combination with something else. So I've been doing a lot of ⁓ kind of hybrid setups with the laptop and the modular synthesizer, which is a nice ⁓ compact kit to carry around. So I have like a suitcase that contains my modular and then a backpack with my laptop and some cables maybe. And that's it. So that's quite portable.
Scott Catey (56:01)
Hmm.
Matthijs Kouw (56:15)
And there's always a live element, it's not completely live. I am very much unashamedly a studio musician so I can't really mix something up on the fly. So some elements are live but there's always a pre-recorded element to it so I tend to mix tracks live on the laptop, do live effects, so live small edits within certain parameters and then use the modular to improvise on top of that.
But I don't really play a lot live these days. am becoming more and more of a studio musician. Just quietly producing, releasing music. For me that's...
Scott Catey (56:59)
Do you use analog at
all? Tapes? A reel to reel? Any of that kind of material?
Matthijs Kouw (57:03)
Not
really, no. No, I have a tape recorder, but I just use it to play back music. I have some analog gear in the form of instruments, so I have some analog synths and some of the modules on the modular are also analog.
Scott Catey (57:17)
What's your modular? Is it a Korg or what?
Matthijs Kouw (57:21)
I used
to own a little bit of Korg but sold it and then dipped my toe a little bit in Buchla. So I played around with the Buchla music, Ezel, Ezel, not sure how to pronounce that, which is a lot of fun, but I primarily use Eurorack, which is a modular standard from Germany.
that is now that led to this huge resurgence of modular synths back in I believe the the aughties or maybe the 2010s. And a lot of people are now doing a lot of work with modular. Sometimes it does get a little bit ridiculous so people are basically making a four to the floor techno on a 40 000 euro setup.
Not that there's anything wrong with that music, but it's just like, now the instruments are becoming kind of a gimmick in itself. And I really don't like that. I think that's, it's a little bit elitist. think musical experimentation should be available to as many people as possible. And by making this statement like, okay, you're really cool if you have this huge ball of synthesizers in front of you. I, for me, that really misses the point.
So for me, it's really not about that.
I don't know, maybe it's a symbol of the penis. Maybe we can get a bit Freudian here, but it's not, for me it's not what it's about. I understand the appeal, but I'm rather the kind of performer that's hidden away in a quarter somewhere and letting the music speak for itself. But I mean, that's just my approach.
Scott Catey (59:14)
Is there a found component to your music or do you set out to create your source material deliberately?
Matthijs Kouw (59:21)
Yeah, I always carry some kind of recording device. I tend to capture sounds if I hear them. ⁓
So yes, sure.
Scott Catey (59:32)
Thanks.
Matthijs Kouw (59:32)
which usually these sounds
are quite mangled so they end up somewhere in the composition but barely recognizable, if at all.
Scott Catey (59:39)
can't wait to listen of your stuff. There's there's albums that I haven't heard yet. So I look forward to going back through your catalog and reacquainting. So we've gone a little over an hour now. And I want to say thanks so much for your time today, Matthijs has been great, really fabulous conversation. love talking with you. And as a close out, anything you'd like to leave people with?
Matthijs Kouw (59:40)
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
Really? Huh.
Thank you, sir.
Yes, first of all, delete your Spotify account right now. Just cancel your subscription, get it over with ⁓ and start buying music from real yeah, big thanks to you. It was really great catching up. We didn't talk for a couple of years before we had our phone call a few weeks ago.
that led to this conversation. So I'm really happy to ⁓ make your acquaintance again. So that's fantastic. ⁓ It's been a gift. It's been a really nice hour. It flew by for me. I really had a good time talking about music. And yeah, if you want to know more, I guess I can leave my website, my bandcamp in the show notes for people to check out my music. ⁓
Keep exploring, keep listening and keep exploring the outer boundaries.
Scott Catey (1:01:07)
again, thanks Matthijs, great to catch up. I'm glad we've reconnected after all these years. And you're the first guest that I've talked to that actually brought up Derrida and Deleuze. So thank you for that. Makes me remember my long ago, which is nice.
Matthijs Kouw (1:01:19)
I couldn't resist.
Thank you, sir. It's been a huge pleasure and an honor. So thank you again.
Scott Catey (1:01:28)
Yeah.
Honors all mine, but thank you. Take care, Matthijs. We'll talk again.
Matthijs Kouw (1:01:34)
Yes, you too. Take care, bye bye.