Mats Gustafsson
Saxplayer, improviser and composer. Soloartist and international tours and projects with a.o. Peter Brötzmann, Sonic Youth, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimi, Ken Vandermark and in working groups The Thing, Sonore, FIRE!, Gush, Boots Brown, Swedish Azz and Nash Kontroll. Large ensemble work with Barry Guy New Orchestra, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and the NU – ensemble.1800 concerts and over 200 recordproductions in Europe, Australia, Africa, North & South America and Asia.
Saxplayer, improviser and composer. Soloartist and international tours and projects with a.o. Peter Brötzmann, Sonic Youth, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimi, Ken Vandermark and in working groups The Thing, Sonore, FIRE!, Gush, Boots Brown, Swedish Azz and Nash Kontroll. Large ensemble work with Barry Guy New Orchestra, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and the NU – ensemble.1800 concerts and over 200 recordproductions in Europe, Australia, Africa, North & South America and Asia.
Member of: DUX Orchestra
In Hindsight
Live recording of a collaboration between multimedia artist Christian Marclay and free jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, which featured Marclay on turntables and Gustafsson on saxophones and took place at Café Oto in London on 13 March 2013. The limited edition release of 500 copies includes the duo’s performance on the A-side and an etching by Marclay on the flip side. Marclay’s onomatopoetic artwork has also been screen printed on the thick card cover.
Christian Marclay was recently awa…
Hidros6
"A significant part of the success is down to the amazing tour de force by Norwegian experimental vocalist Stine Janvind Motland who brings an affecting mix of vulnerability, sexuality and sheer prowess to the party. Gustafsson selected a line from each of 20 favorite Little Richard songs to serve as the basic text for Motland to embroider. Via a graphic score Mats Gustafsson also ensures ample solo space for his illustrious cast, as well as composed sections peppered throughout the performance.…
Vi Ar Alla Guds Slavar
Vi Är Alla Guds Slavar is the latest missive from the long-running duo pairing of Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, etc) and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth, Chelsea Light Moving, Dream/Aktion Unit, etc). Thurston had first come across Mats' playing on a duo disc with Barry Guy and had assumed he was one of those older beardy European improv guys - Remember this was before the internet and everyone knew everything. Their first actual meeting goes back to the early 90s at Bl…
A Map of Guilt
Mats Gustafsson and Joachim Nordwall joined their forces for a magmatic new LP out on Bocian. This long player was recorded at Garnison7, Vienna by Martin Siewert in January 2013. Mats Gustafsson - blowing stuff, organ surfing, piano mating.Joachim Nordwall - guitar wanking, synth loving.Mixed by idealist & Christopher Berg at Svenska Grammofonstudion, Gothenburg in Octobre 2015.
Falling And Five Other Failings
Mats Gustafsson plays slide, tenor, baritone, bass saxophones. Christof Kurzmann uses special ppooll software and voice, live processing. Recorded, mixed & mastered at Garnison 7, Vienna by Martin Siewert. Artwork by Jimmy Draht. Liner notes by Ken Vandermark. Limited vinyl edition of 300 with screen-printed covers. Ken Vandermark, from the liner notes: "On the surface, its fundamental components seem to come from the 20th century: the saxophone (invented in 1846, but not coming to the fore unti…
MG 50 - Peace & Fire
In October 2015, a three-day was held at Porgy & Bess in Vienna for the 50th birthday of Mats Gustafsson, saxophone player extraordinaire in contemporary (free) jazz with The Thing, Fire!, and various duo/trio/ensemble formations. Many collaborators of Gustafsson's were invited to join in various formations. The first three discs of the four-CD set were recorded October 26-28, 2014 at Porgy & Bess in Vienna byMikael Werliin. The fouth disc was recorded October 26-28th, 2014 at "Strenge Kammer," …
Melt
Begun as a temporary project in 2014 by Mats Gustafsson(The Thing, Fire!), Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt), and Massimo Pupillo (Zu), this trio soon evolved into a band project. They're now releasing their first album on Trost Records, with a tour to follow in 2016. Mats Gustafsson: saxophone; Brian Chippendale: drums; Massimo Pupillo: bass.
Jukebox-Series 001
To kick off their new “Jukebox Series”, Trost Records provide us with a single pairing up the jubilarian with German painter Albert Oehlen. It’s certainly a somewhat unexpected collaboration; but then again, Gustafsson is a restless soul, constantly looking for new challenges, constantly seeking to push the envelope – so why not team up with someone from the visual arts? Besides, Oehlen is no complete stranger to the world of music. In the 80’s, he was part of the Neue Wilde art movement – along…
Live at Heine Onstad Kunstsenter
Thurston Moore’s résumé is monolithic – with his band Sonic Youth and as a solo artist few people has had the same impact on music in the last 35 years. Moore has been instrumental is building bridges between the mainstream and underground experimental music.Coming out from the jazz scene, Mats Gustafsson holds a similar position, with endless projects, collaborations and three decades of non-stop touring, recording and performing.The duo have collaborated several times before, starting with Son…
A Duo(s)
In case you weren't there, Bocian present documentation of a pretty unhinged Cafe Oto session between gifted improvisers, Mats Gustafsson (reeds), John Russell (guitar) & Phil Minton (voice). Just imagine stumbling in on this one unprepared - a trio of blokes bleating, parping and yanking like Reeves & Mortimer after three days on the sauce. Of course, that description does a disservice to their well-honed extended technique and dexterity, but we'd defy anyone to keep a totally straight face at …
Lap dance / Table solos
On December 14th, 2011 - Mats Gustafsson played an amazing solo concert at our table at Bar Brooklyn in Stockholm. He was supposed to play a "real" concert but bastards didn't care much for that so he ended up playing at the head of our table. Someone spilled a full beer over his merch that was on that table, and we were all overly excited, of course. Jean-Louis Huhta recorded it on his Zoom, and this is an excellent document of today's leading free jazz magus. Limited to 200 copies. Tran…
Everything was forever, until it was no more
The record is an attempt to document a sound installation by Konrad Smoleski presented in at the Polish Pavillion at the 55th Venice Biennale 2013. The sound sculpture is based primarily on the manipulation of the tolling of a bell. Through the process of transforming this familiar tone of traditional bells, Smole ski also changes its meaning: a sound that evokes a variety of associations is given an abstract frequency that seems devoid of connotations. Not only does the artist free the sound fr…
Sin Gas
Wire Magazine's official King of All Skronk Mats Gustafsson is back with his partner in time Paal Nilssen-Love for a new duo record this week. I'm rather struck by the creepy skeleton on the front cover, and I'm also gleaning enjoyment from the textural bubble'n'squeak madness on the disc. There are quite a few droney periods on this one, with Gustafsson eking soft moans and primal howls and jagged rasps from his saxophone, with the drums often puttering around amorphously, but there are also mo…
Oslo Tapes
Mats Gustafsson, aka King Skronk, aka Skronkmeister General, aka The Skronk Controller, aka Squeaky Pete, aka Skronkmaster Flash, joins forces with another experimental giant Lasse Marhaug (aka The Ear Destroyer, aka Mr Skreee, aka Electro Crunch Bastard, aka Testicle Hazard) on this sanity-obliterating collaboration. Squeaky reeds go head to head against fluttering, hissing, rotting reels in a shrill, broken, fluttering noise experiment. It sounds horrible, of course, and if you're looking at t…
Stones
LP + CD version. Here are two of the planet's most uncompromising and inventive young hornithologists and saxophonists, Colin Stetson and Mats Gustafsson. Mats Gustafsson is the uncompromising Swedish saxophonist famous for his no-holds barred style. Colin Stetson is a member of Arcade Fire's touring group, and his prodigious bass saxophone tones have been called on by a host of American alternative acts including Bon Iver, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, TV on the Radio, David Byrne, Feist, My Brig…
Con-gas
Of course we know Bocian since their earliest releases, which was all on 7". Now, an impressive catalogue further, they suddenly return to this format, and make two of them. On one hand Bocian is a label for strictly improvised music and on the other hand for radical experiments in electronic music. This 7" is clearly a product of the first interest. These four pieces were recorded earlier this year in Vienna and has Nilssen-Love on congas and Gustafsson on slide and brass saxophones. This is th…
Shift
Sweden's advanced free jazz piano trio Correction (Sebastian Bergstrom on piano, Joacim Hyberg on bass, and Emil Astrand-Melin on drums) are met by fellow Swede, baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, for a stunning album ranging from abstract to hard blowing improv."In Gaito Gazdanov's marvelous novel "The Spectre of Alexander Wolf" there is a crucial scene in which the narrator contemplates his future lover Jelena Nikolajewna and wonders about her disharmonic physiognomy which he considers as a…
Cuts
If jazz, as the eminent critic Whitney Balliet once wrote, is the “sound of surprise,†Cuts, an intensely cathartic, fiercely turbulent collaboration between Japanese noise purveyor Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustasfsson, is the “sound of shock and awe.†A sonic assault of epic proportions, it blends the bombast of Merzbow’s grinding white noise barrages with Pandi’s thunderous pulse on the kit and Gust…
Mats G plays Gullin
restocked, very last around...3rd in a series of 3 solo one-sided LP (previous two on qbico)... this time Mats G on baritone sax render an homage to his own country leading sax player: Mr. Lars Gullin. (label press)
Off-Road
"Cheerful Mats was dragged into the studio last year by David Grubbs for the ostensible purpose of contributing to a Thicket-in-the-works. The pair instead became terminally sidetracked with recording the two lengthy duets for harmonium and tenor saxophone and harmonium and fluteophone (Mat's invention -- a flute with a reed mouthpiece) that make up Apertura. Listening to Apertura, the first question is 'who is doing what?' It's not certain that even the artists themselves know." Two long …