FALL
Wade Matthews, Carmen Morales
Duration 42.18 | Released June 2022
Wade Matthews - digital synthesis & field recordings processed in real time
Carmen Morales - prepared piano
Aspen 6.51
Abscission I 5.59
Plunge and Tumble (five variations) 5.52
Abscission II 3.44
Hawthorn 19.50
Recorded by Wade Matthews
at Bodegas Descalzos Viejos, Ronda in August 2021
Mixed and mastered by Wade Matthews
at Smiling Cow Studio, Madrid in September 2021
About the Artists
Advanced academic studies in composition helped French-born American musician Wade Matthews realize he was not interested in telling other people what or how to play. In 1989, he moved from New York to Madrid and became part of the international improv community. Drawing on his knowledge of electronic music, he approached the bass clarinet and alto flute as “acoustic synthesizers”, rethinking their sonic possibilities, phrasing, and relation to breath in a musical language based on real-time creation. When faster processors made laptop synthesis viable, Matthews returned to his first love, tweaking a virtual synthesizer to allow very rapid control of sound parameters for solo playing and dialog with others. In 2007, he founded INTERMEDIA 28 with photographer Adam Lubroth and guitarist Julio Camarena. There, he began to combine field recordings with electronic synthesis in a 2-computer setup that has since become his main instrument.

Pianist and sound artist Carmen Morales studied at the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Malaga, Spain and the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, completing her research thesis—The Physical-Acoustic Dimension of Prepared Piano—in 2017 with various public concerts and conferences in Spain, Colombia and the United States. Her professional career as a pianist began in 2013 and has taken her around Europe, North and South America as a soloist and member of new music ensembles.
She is currently active as a member of the audiovisual duo, Duro Vino and in numerous parallel projects involving improvisation, including a recording project with Wade Matthews, solo recordings for the Oigovisiones label in Malaga and others in duo with Colombian contrabassist Juan Pablo Balcázar.
