MATTI BYE — IVO

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MATTI BYE — CAPRI CLOUDS
Matti Bye's third album, Capri Clouds, moves through the element of the air and further into space. A lone piano sounds, echoes - sometimes like a waltz.
We have the sound of the wind with us and the sound of the sea below us as we fly, and above we hear the stars and planets spinning. A piano from the
past, as if Satie met space - as if Spiritualized and Satie talked to each other across time and space.
These songs go straight to the heart and to the senses, and create images in your head. Stories from your own memory bank, as well as new visions –
music to lean into, meditatively and hopefully longing. But there is also an undertone of something dark and desolate.
Musically, Matti Bye moves within the realm of neo-classicism, but he is also approaching romanticism. References to composers such as Schubert and
Beethoven are to be found here, as well as to post-romantic bands such as Kraftwerk and The Cure.
In this third album of a trilogy – the first was Bethanien, the second The Forgotten Land – Bye continues his musical journey. Here we encounter a
brighter and lighter production. Anders af Klintberg has brought Capri Clouds up from the underworld and the dreamscape, towards clouds and skies.

Ulrika Revenäs Strollo

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Open Source (Panavision), 2023

Work by Katarina Löfström, music and performance by Matti Bye.  Video: henry Moore Selder

Matti Bye composed and performed music for Open Source (Panavision), a Public Art piece for Saltskog Gård in 2023. Open Source (Panavision) is a monumental free standing piece made from thousands of loosely hanging sequins that reflect light and visualize the movements of the wind.

Biography

Born in 1966 in Stockholm, experimental musician, composer and performer Matti Bye deconstructs music by playing acoustic instruments in unconventional ways, creatively investigating the limitations of sound and instruments. In this way he challenges our expectations and preconceived notions about what beautiful music is - Music is not perfection - it is human, and by pushing the boundaries of instruments and sounds in various warped and different ways, a new, exciting field opens that can surprise the listener. The piano has often been at the centre, and Matti Bye's piano music creates textures with a material feel that becomes associative and image-like. He created and developed a unique method during his years as an improvisational musician for early silent films at the Cinemateket in Stockholm since 1989. Working with the piano and other acoustic instruments, he processes their sounds with, among other things, tape loops on a reel to reel tape recorder and a variety of electronic devices and thus embarks on journeys of discovery to the white spots of the musical map.

Matti Bye is active in the improvisation groups Trio Ramberget from Gothenburg, Kiri Ra! (FIN) Red Largo (Berlin) Hydras Dream (with Anna Von Hausswolff) Mambo Noir Trio (Stockholm with musicians Vilhelm Bromander and Dennis Egberth) and Matti Bye Ensemble with performances at e.g. M.O.M.A. (NY), Cinema Ritrovato, (IT) Midnight Sun Film Festival, Sodankylä (FIN) and San Francisco Silent Film Festival (US) His collaborations span a wide horizon ranging from chamber music to dark ambient techno on stages from the Berlin Atonal festival’s Kraftwerk to Stockholm’s prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre.

In addition to his concerts and disc recordings, Matti Bye writes commissioned music for theatre, film, and television. Among the films can be mentioned "Tove" (Directed by Zaida Bergroth), "The Serious Game" (Directed by Pernilla August) and "Maria Larsson's Eternal Moment" (Directed by Jan Troell). The scores for thatre include "The Last Scream" (Directed by Ingmar Bergman), "The Greedy" (Director Gösta Ekman), and for television the SVT production "The detective from Beledweyne" (Director Zaida Bergroth).

Awards - 2 Guldbagge, Selma Lagerlöf’s Mårbacka Prize, Harpa Award, Stockholm City Cultural Stipend.

MATTI BYE — Between Darkness and White Snow (Northern Electronics)

The prolific Swedish pianist and composer Matti Bye has long been associated with Northern Electronics, appearing on well-enumerated compilations and collaboration-rich works. This is the first time he presents his own full-length recording with the label.

'Between Darkness and White Snow' captures Bye's elemental radiance in four vignettes. Recorded on a 1926 Steinway Grand Piano through an EMS Synthi A, 'Between Darkness and White Snow' renders the perplexity of polarity with a grave assembly of textural phenomena and lyrical figures. As ephemeral harmonic mazes wilt into subdued distortion, we are left with a tentative invitation to gaze into the pooling material of Bye's compositions.

Written, recorded and produced by Matti Bye in Fårö, Sweden 2022.
The recordings were made on a 1926 Steinway Grand Piano through the EMS Synthi A, recorded onto tape with Nagra IV S.

The radio program Elektroniskt/P2 editorial team selects the best electronic songs and albums from 2023

"Matti Bye is mainly associated with his film music, but his work does perfectly well without images, something he really shows on the album Between darkness and white snow"

Photography by Matti Bye.
Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome.

Released December 11, 2023.

Video by Matti Bye

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MATTI BYE — BETHANIEN (ROTOR RECORDS)

It began in 2010. If you were anywhere near Oranienstraße, you may have heard it as it traveled through the hallways of a Kreuzberg artist residence once used as a hospital, as it passed you by and continued across the canal, along the piers. The sound of Matti Bye carefully pressing the keys of an old grand piano. Its singing tones taking flight for all of Kreuzberg to hear. Illuminated by the stars of a clear winter sky. Illuminated by the beams of a scorching summer sun. Kreuzberg wasn’t always like this.

This is a re-release of the out of print 2013 album, with revisited artwork.

In stores December 4th.

Limited edition of 300 copies.

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MATTI BYE — THIS FORGOTTEN LAND (ROTOR RECORDS)

This Forgotten Land offers a deeply atmospheric, affecting experience, seeped in nostalgia and yet thrillingly contemporary. Peculiarly otherworldly, serenely haunting, and utterly unforgettable, it lingers long after its conclusion, its atmosphere a magical mist that can never quite be apprehended. Out of time, but just in time, it confirms Matti Bye as a vital composer of visionary, cinematic scope. It will endure, in fact, because it sounds like it’s always been among us.

This is a re-release of the out of print 2017 album, with revisited artwork.

In stores December 4th.

Limited edition of 300 copies.

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