Wade Matthews & Stéphane Rives
Arethusa

Wade Matthews    software synthesis & manipulated field recordings
Stéphane Rives     soprano saxophone

1.        8:50
2.        8:17
3.      17:23
4.      11:58

Recorded in Madrid, July 2008

Sleevenotes by  Wade Matthews

“Perusing Ovid while translating a text on Rubens’ Vertumnus and Pomona, I came across the story of Arethusa, a metaphorical tale of flight and transformation that speaks to the identity of the musicians on the present CD, their artistic evolution and their way of making music.  Arethusa - a Nereid nymph and virginal servant of the Greek goddess Artemis (Diana the Huntress to the Romans) - takes a dip in a stream, not knowing it belongs to the river god, Alpheus.  Alpheus pursues her with carnal intent.  Arethusa flees but is unable to outrun the libidinous river.  She cries out to Artemis, who quickly envelops her in a dense cloud, successfully hiding Arethusa from the god.  Fear and the exertion of running cause her to perspire so heavily that, hidden in the fog, she gradually turns into a stream.  Alpheus is eager to mingle his waters with hers, but Artemis opens a subterranean channel that bears Arethusa’s stream to Ortygia in Sicily, where she becomes a fountain.

For two expatriate musicians, this story speaks of attitudes towards change, perception and identity.  Arethusa is fleeing not Alpheus’ sexual aggression, but rather the change it would wreak.  And therein lies the first paradox, for Arethusa’s escape is brought about by her transformation.  It is unbidden metamorphosis - not the cloud - that actually saves her.  While Alpheus contnues to search for her in the mist, Arethusa becomes water and flows away from him.  But what has she escaped?  And what has she lost?  In her flight from change she is irredemiably transformed.  From a forest-dwelling nymph at the service of Arteis, she metamorphoses into a Sicilian fountain.  She has not escaped change at all.

And here we reach the second paradox.  Not only has Arethusa changed; in her quest to remain herself, she has become exactly what she fled.  The forest nymph’s contact with water is irremediable, her change ineluctable.  First she takes a dip in the water, then she is pursued by a god in the formof a river.  Artemis hides her in a cloud - yet another form of water - while she perspires until she herself becomes a stream, flowing until she becomes a fountain.  Fleeing from a river she fears will rob her of all she holds dear, she becomes water herself.

Of course, change and identity are keys to any improviser’s praxis, for change is the only constant, and improvising calls for a carefully weighed mix of action and reaction.  Action comes from within; reaction from a clear grasp of what is happening at every moment, that is, the capacity to perceive change and flow with it while remaining oneself.  We generally associate perception with learning and thus with knowledge, yet its strongest ties to change and identity may lie in the attitude that accompanies the perceptual act.  For improvisers, the most fecund may be that of acceptance.  Improvisation is context-based art making and contexts are in constant change.  Perceiving change is thus imperative, but it must be accompanied by acceptance, by the recognition that a perceived change has already happened.  Acceptance of this is essential to the cognitive agility one needs in order to continue creating one’s music.  The poles are Proteus and Procrustes and one hopes to be closer to the former than the latter.

Perhaps the story of Arethusa is an object lesson in the dangers of non-acceptance - a delicate point if we read it too superficially.  I am not advocating Arethusa’s surrender to Alpheus, nor her mere acceptance of the obvious fact that change is inevitable, but rather that identity per se is inevitably linked not to immobility but to change.  The question is how to use change to maintain identity, rather than to destroy it.  Therein lies freedom.  I think that is what this music is about.”

Reviews:

“Sometimes a beautiful idea gives birth to a beautiful work. That is the case here: the idea was to put  Stéphane Rives (on soprano saxophone) face to face with Wade Matthews (on fields recordings and electronics).  And the work in question is Arethusa.

On Arethusa a dialogue takes place not with words but with unusual sounds.  Unusual to such a point that it’s difficult to define the sounds except by using comparisons: like the peaceful atmosphere of a corner of central Java, or like light being transcribed into musical notes which filter through to the deepest of underground spaces.  Which is to say that the collaboration of Rives and Matthews is essentially a natural one, which plays with materials (wood especially ), three of the four elements (water, earth and air), and with numerous silences.  A decrescendo, and the duo disappears.”                                                                Pierre Cécile, Le Son du Grisli

“A fine amalgamation of software-generated synthetic sounds, treated field recordings and soprano saxophone that spells out its legitimacy over four tracks, each different in terms of sonority and, at the very least, engaging when not veritably transfixing. Such is the case of the opening segment, a painstaking vacillation of elevated pitches - some of them pretty smooth, other uneven – that initiates a series of natural glissandos and shrilling adjacencies whose near-incandescent vibrancy is essential for a thorough purging of the auricular conduits. The second track is adequate if a little more normal, rolling percussiveness of the wooden kind and stinging whistle mixing in various degrees of cohesiveness. Not groundbreaking, but nice. The third subdivision increases the distance between the events, also extending the brain’s faculty of anticipating a sonic occurrence while still remaining astounded by the glory of selected sudden appearances. It happens with imposingly resounding bumps and pulses, in turn eliciting subsonic ramifications amidst solid materials caressed by Rives’ extemporaneous sibilance, mystifying harmonics, bumblebee buzzes and aborted honks. A ceremonial aura permeates this section, intermittently turning it into a quasi-paranormal experience. The record is ended by a piece juxtaposing severe upper partials and whispered talking, the whole surrounded by less decipherable manifestations, grainy hissing and sub-quaking drones. I could have done without the vocal constituent; however, this remains a completely fitting conclusion for a frequently magnetizing release.”
 Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault

“Two new, or at least less known names for me, in the world of improvised music. Wade Matthews is credited with software synthesis & manipulated field recordings and Stephane Rives is credited with soprano saxophone. He is playing the soprano saxophone in an unconventional way, of course, very minimal, sublime, mostly producing hissing sounds... At the same time, the electronic sounds of Wade Matthews are making rumbles that intervene with the saxophone, also sublime and precise, dissolving into a hypnotic kind of atmosphere, putting you into a trance kind of mood, a primary state of being... 'Arethusa' is music in a state of becoming, desintegrated even before it achieves it's full form... At the edge of existence... At the edge of presence... A sheer minimalistic beauty... I would definitely like to see and listen to the both of these musicians play this at a concert... Excellent album!”     
Boban Ristevski,  Outlands