threads

The new solo album by the California-based musician and composer Mattie Barbier is a multilayered personal investigation into questions of space, resonance, and evolving identity. Entitled “threads”, the work was recorded in the midst of covid lockdown at The Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangley, Colorado, deep within the rural hills of the Mountain West. 

A feeling of place. The sounds exist as a space of presence during times of chaos and precarity. Reflected in the process of leaving a rural farm before sunrise, driving deep into the country to find a repurposed water tank. An extended drive through curving mountain passes and narrow valleys of pasture land. almost missing the session due to a group of cows blocking the road, herded away by actual cowboys arriving on horseback. Preparing pages of compositional intent only to jettison them in favor of being engulfed by the particularities of this unique acoustic space. 

of quarantining in a very conservative place as a non-binary person, my welcome tenuous. of uncertainty of where non-binaryness fits as a parent - of remaining a dad? or at least treated as one and learning to accept the lack of responsibility it’s allowed.  Of trying to unlearn the patriarchal benefits i’ve happily accepted.

threads is the result of a collaboration between Mattie Barbier’s beguiling and inventive technical capacity and the unique acoustics of The Tank. They seek to relinquish the control and directness of solo playing in order to shift one’s ears towards freely producing sound you cannot control, but only exist with and within.