Five song ep by Susan Matthews

Catalogue Number: SW73

Reviews:

Susan Matthews –‘Lost Sorrows’ CDr

Susan Matthews’s music meets at a cross roads between ambient, noise, and sound-art and this is her fifth release on her own label. The five tracks here are weaved from melancholy piano patterns fed through feed back fuzz, downbeat organ unfolds and pained noise edges, with haunting  emotional harmonies bobbing up here & there. This is beautiful sad and pained music that has real feeling and depth to it – at times the emotional honesty she has fed into the music almost makes one want to cry.  Though this only is just short of 20 minutes running time it feels just right, if there had been anymore it could well have become too much & drowned in it’s own gloomy beauty as it stands it’s a startling emotional and beautiful audio ride.

Roger Batty
Judas Kiss Magazine, Dec 2007

Susan Matthews – Lost Sorrows EP, 2007

Dans une veine plus expérimentale, SUSAN MATTHEWS parfait les contours accidentés de son art intimiste. Dès “blistered sunlight”, le piano grésille sous une masse de saturation issue d’un passé fait de douleur et se réconcilie avec les gémissements séducteurs d’un esprit désincarné, suspendu dans l’air électrifié tel une âme regardant fixement vers le bas sur son corps par elle abandonné. Conjurant un au-delà sonique de hantise, dérivant, rêveur, menaçant et maléfique, constitué de drones épaisses, grondantes et vrombissantes que vient tempérer un filet de vocalises aériennes , Lost Sorrows expose admirablement une suite cohérente d’ambiance sereines en dépit de son agencement complexe et confus. Les morceaux naissent dans le silence le plus complet, duquel monte lentement un sifflement désorientant et plaintif jusqu’à essaimer en crescendo des drones renversantes déchiré par des incantations désolées, avant de soigneusement retomber dans ses stoïques brumes muettes. En ce 18 mai, rien ne saurait mieux tomber à point pour oublier l’anniversaire du décès d’Ian Curtis. Grazie mille.

Amadeo In_tensioN, May 2007

Translation: In a more experimental vein, [{{SUSAN MATTHEWS}} – http://www.sirenwire.com%5D perfects the broken contours of her intimate art. With “blistered sunlight”, the piano crackles under a mass of saturation resulting from a past made of pain and is reconciled with the tempting moanings of a disembodied spirit, suspended in the air ‘n’ electrified like a soul fixedly looking downwards on its abandoned body. Conjuring a sonic, drifting, dreamy, threatening and malefic here-after, made up of thick drones, thundering and humming that a net of soaring singing exercises comes to moderate, {Lost Sorrows} admirably exposes a coherent continuation of serene environment in spite of its complex set-up. The pieces are born in the most complete silence, slowly growing into a disorientating and plaintive whistle until it blooms in a crescendo of astounding sounds torn by afflicted ‘n’ desolate incantations, before carefully falling down in its stoical silent fogs. On this 18th of May, nothing could come at a better time to help and forget the anniversary of Ian Curtis’ death. Grazie Mille.

Susan Matthews – Lost Sorrows EP CD
Siren Wire Recordings, 2007
http://www.sirenwire.com

My own discovery of Susan Matthews’ work came when I was given the opportunity to review her second album, Bruiser. After listening to some of the tracks on her Myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/susanmatthews) I was happy to have been given a chance to investigate her music in more detail. Stylistically, Matthews’ work is avant garde and experimental, drawing you in with its careful construction and considered content. She is also not afraid to push boundaries and explore new sounds, moods and forms of expression through her music and the end result is something quite original and engaging. Lost Sorrows is an 18 minute CD EP that follows Matthews’ second album, Bruiser, on her own Siren Wire Recordings label. With her third album due later this year, Lost Sorrows may hint at what to expect.

Heavy on atmosphere, sometimes awash with decaying distortion and often accompanied with her own ethereal vocal tones, Lost Sorrows runs through a range of moods and feelings in its duration. Opening with the distorted piano melodies of “Blistered Sunlight”, the EP gets off to an uneasy and melancholic start. The mood becomes more ominous with the low mechanical grind of “On a Theme of Falling” and is enhanced towards its close by Matthews’ own wonderfully folk styled vocal accompaniment. The theme is continued through into “A Passionate Hush” which takes elements of the two preceding tracks and fuses them together to form a wonderful whole; low swirling distortion, deranged piano and other-worldly vocals coming in and out of the mix. The end result turns “A Passionate Hush” into something of an enigma; on one hand it could be deemed disturbing and ghostly yet on another it is strangely comforting and absorbing. It is at this point that Matthews treats us to the beautifully gentle ambience of the wonderfully titled “My Name is Safe in Your Mouth”. Resembling the big warm sound of a church organ, it emanates waves of floating sound from beginning to end. The EP ends much as it started with the distorted piano of “Blistered Moonlight”; the last tune of a late night’s playing reflecting the worries and thoughts of the player one last time before the end of another day and the notes are erased by electronic distortion.

Matthews appears to use her music to exorcise her demons and bear her soul, expressing anger, frustration, serenity, dejection and everything in between through her work. Often emotive and always intense, each track has its own mood and identity but all bear the hallmarks of her unique experimental sensibilities.

— Paul Lloyd [8/10]
Connexion Bizarre, April 2007

Susan Matthews – Lost Sorrows
Siren Wire Recordings 2007

Susan continues to dig through the rabbit hole, picking scabs and crawling in and out of our head machinery. Beautiful, desolate and intoxicating work.

Dan Scaffer, LiveJournal March 2007