Kaffe Matthews. Biography. 2008.
“It's dangerous, but playing live on that fragile human boundary between success and failure is an essential part of her process.”
Kaffe Matthews was born in Essex, England, and lives and works in London. She has been making and performing new electro-acoustic music since 1992 and is acknowledged as a leading figure and pioneer in the field of electronic improvisation and live composition. In 1997 she established the label Annette Works, releasing the best of these events on the six cd's, 'cd Ann', 'cd Bea' , 'cd cecile' ,'cd dd', 'cd eb and flo' presenting an annual document of ever developing sound worlds.
Currently she is rarely performing, instead directing the collaborative research project Music for Bodies with multidisciplinary professionals and the community, bringing new music and some ideas about listening to everyone.(NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship, 2005).
Kaffe has become known for making site-specific sound works live, playing in the dark in the middle of the space, the audience surrounding her, the sounds moving around them. She uses self-designed software matrices through which she pulls, pushes and reprocesses sounds live, using microphones and feedback within the space, the site becoming her instrument. It's this practice that she's shifted to sonic furniture building, with Sonic Bed_London(Distinction,Prix Ars Electronica,2006) and the Worldwide Bed project being a central pin in this ongoing collaboration.
Kaffe has worked and performed with many artists worldwide including AGF, Ryoko Kuwajima, Eliane Radigue (The Lappetites), David Muth, Shri, Mandy McIntosh, Zeena Parkins, Sachiko M, Brian Duffy, Leafcutter John, Janek Schaeffer, Ikue Mori, Marina Rosenfeld, Pan-Sonic, Alan Lamb, Christian Fennesz, and ongoing democractic stuggles with pan-European electronics orchestra 'MIMEO'. Her most recent collaborative release, Before the Libretto, with the Lappetites, was voted in the WIRE's best top 10 new releases for 2005. Currently they work on an opera for 2009.
She has also been making a growing body of composed works through collaborations with a variety of people, things and processes. From working with NASA astronauts researching the sonic experience of space travel, making BAFTA awarded Weightless Animals : kites and the weather on uninhabited Scottish island,Sanda, Weather Made; taut Wires in the Australian outback with Alan Lamb; Touching Concrete Lightly for MIMEO and the Oscar Niemeyeyer Pavilion 2003, Serpentine Gallery, London; the innovative Radio Cycle (2004), a concept and works for maps, bikes and radios ~ developed with 11 year olds and ground-breaking GPS system in The Marvelo Project,2008 and in 2009 with sharks and conservation scientists on the Galapagos Islands.
Background.
Playing classical violin from the age of 7, singing badly in one band but getting further professionally with bass and drums in 4 years, in 1985 she discovered electricity and listening and with that, her current trajectory.
Since then, acid house engineering, electrically reconstructing the violin, Distinction for a Masters in Music Technology, introducing and running a Performance Technology course at one of the leading Live Arts Colleges in the UK, establishing the label Annette Works and in 2009 launching the audio research lab, AUDREY in London's east End. She also set up a shop and did a Zoology degree along the way.
