MV & EE
Members: Matt Valentine
Galactic Ooze (LP)
"Originally issued as a CDR on Matt's own Child of Microtones label, the stone madness of this session was so overwhelming we begged him to let us do it on vinyl. Luckily for one and all, he agreed. Recorded here and there, with a variety of different ensembles. Galactic Ooze is one of the most fully warped missives from Planet MV, and that is saying something. While there is a certain continuity between the layered threads of MV's deeply processed vocals and amazing stunned-noodle guitar figuri…
Water Weird (LP)
Long before the indie rock vampires got hip to the jam, Wet Tuna's Matt Valentine and PG Six (Pat Gubler) were twisting folk-blues, the avant garde, west coast and Swedish psychedelia into a fat one in the beloved underground unit Tower Recordings. Tower's journey ended some time ago but MV and PG Six found new paths—Matt mostly around the MV & EE tree and Pat's solo songwriter sojourns. These brothers of the steel-string reconvened a couple years ago to delve deeper into rural electrification …
Liberty Rose
A classic album by contemporary psychic blues visionaries MV & EE. The duo spent 40 days and 40 nights under the twisted trees and endless sky of the Mojave desert via a Vermont homestead, freedom and unity. That's where these songs were unformed in dreams, floating off to mingle with the collective unconscious of coyotes and rattlesnakes, before they were re-birthed as smoke signals channeled through shaky hands, an old tele, germanium transistors and a bucket brigade. One of the purest distill…
Alpine Frequency
Matt Valentine and Erika Elder have been cutting new synaptic pathways through brainic underbrush since before most people became capable of breathing air. That said, their albums (many of which are CDR-only issues on their own Child of Microtones imprint) often have a specific delirious blueprint, designed to shift only a certain batch of molecules and/or air into forms that translate into music. Such is not the case with Alpine Frequency. This lazily explorative 2LP set was sewn into a w…
Root/Void
Matt Valentine and Erika Elder take their homespun hypnotics and cosmic country sounds to new levels on Root / Void. I love this album - it trips hard and hauntingly - a gift for languid golden afternoons or late night moonlight powwows. Anthem-worthy tape edits on some cuts crack open surreal and cinematic vistas. While joined by fellow travelers here and there, this album remains in essence a fecund duet from two entwined souls, updating and re-defining their unique pool of sound. Intrep…
Fuzzweed
With each successive release, MV & EE strive to map new territory and to travel more distant orbits. It makes sense that this mission is their furthest reaching yet. While they've long been comfortable navigating the same planes as such cosmic explorers as Sun Ra and Alan Silva, Fuzzweed sees them planting their freak flag in the sorts of different galaxies where the atmospheres counterpoint the music of the spheres with the more earthbound plaints of the blues. Please remember that The …
Country Stash
By necessity, any conversation about the music of Matt Valentine (MV) and Erika Elder (EE) is eventually going to touch on their prolific output. The Vermont duo's constant production has simply become one of its defining facts. In addition to a steady stream of studio albums for Ecstatic Peace!, MV & EE have continued to release small-batch recordings on their own Child of Microtones label, including a Dick's Picks-style series of live recordings on the offshoot Heroine Celestial Agriculture su…
What I Became
"If string theory is correct, this is approximately the thirteenth album Matt Valentine has released that definitely shouldnt be filed under a group name (Tower Recordings, Bummer Road, Golden Road, etc.). On the other hand, if string theory is correct, this might also be his 11,000th album. The truth, one suspects, is somewhere in between. Since bedding down in southern Vermont at the dawn of the century, MV has been as cussedly prolific as anyone. The gout of LPs, cassettes, CDRs, singles and …
Space Chanteys
Matt Valentine creates, has created, and will continue to create from inside of a continuum that unspools from a source that is also so distant as to be invisible. Mysterious Translucence is not just the name of his shoe. Space Chanteys is really the first honest solo album that Matt Valentine has created. There have been others that are somewhat like it, or are related to it, in shape, or in style, but they are not it. This alone is it. It is Space Chanteys. Recorded live, back in October ’00, …