Asthma Drum from head fodder... by Matt Atkins & Chris Hill

Matt Atkins
I consider myself a non-musician. I don’t approach my art from an academic standpoint, having had no formal training. Instead the terms arranger, collector or curator might better describe my practice in sonic and visual art. Using an old computer running cracked software and without a mixing desk or any outboard gear my sonic explorations use sounds from field recordings I’ve made as the building blocks of these ‘constructions’. In some of my work I also use stripped back electronics and vintage 808 and 909 drum sounds to experiment with the boundaries of rhythm and texture.
Under various guises (Platform, Seven Hour Germ, Shaded Monocle, Fertile Structure) I’ve produced all but two of the thirty two releases on my own label, Minimal Resource Manipulation. I am particularly interested in abstraction, loops, shifting textures and timbres and the element of chance. My recent work leans more toward the practice of sound art, with fewer traditionally ‘musical’ elements.
I’ve released music on other labels such as Midnight Circles (Germany), Falt (France), Invisible City (UK), Rusted Tone Recordings (UK), TQ (UK), Epicene (US), Cryoworks (Ukraine), Escala (Spain), Smallfish and Suburbs of Hell (UK) and The Unexplained Sounds Group (Italy). I’ve been played on Zoviet France’s ‘A Duck in a Tree’ show on Resonance FM a number of times and the British Library have also recently added the MRM back catalogue to their sound archive. I have recently begun organising a series of improv concerts called 3×3, which take place at the Arch 1 venue in West Ham, London.
I currently play drums in several London based bands; Crumbling Ghost, Newts, Smallgang, Slowgun, Splintered Man and Russell and the Wolf Choir and, in the 90’s, Huge Baby.
‘There is a feel about these tracks of the juxtaposition of discarded cans and milk bottle tops with the remote immensity of aluminium-plated corridors on deserted, imaginary space stations, especially on “Thoracic Drop”. There are reminders, too, of Autechre, of all the beat generators once used to entertain on dancefloors now operating for their own sake in a space in which humanity has been notionally dispensed with.’ – The Wire
mrmrecordings.bandcamp.com

Tracklist

1.	Matt Atkins & Chris Hill - Asthma Drum	4:36

Credits

from head fodder..., released June 26, 2020
Matt Atkins - percussive objects
Chris Hill - distraught piano

License