Retribution Body is Matt Azevedo, whose main instrument is an ancient analog synthesizer called the ARP. His performance practice, as evidenced by a recent live broadcast at
rarefrequency.com (
MP3), has at its core the drone, which is to say the often-ignored sound that is brought to the forefront of one’s listening experience through the employment of patience (active on the part of the musician, presumed on the part of the audience) and that closely related compositional constraint: a willfully limited palette. The Rare Frequency show is something of a tour of the ARP’s industrial-synthesis strengths, and also of Azevedo’s ability not only to coax rough sine waves from the machine, but to shape them over the course of half an hour into something of a sonic narrative, from near silence, through a variety of related wave forms (potent squigglies, rough squares, rich static).
[audio:http://www.rarefrequency.com/podcasts/Podcast_Spec_Ed_41_Retribution_Body.mp3|titles=”Live on Rare Frequency”|artists=Retribution Body (aka Matt Azevedo)]
More at rarefrequency.com (from which the above photo is borrowed) and retributionbody.com.
