Hi and welcome to the 7th track by "Then She Reaches For The Gun". The ever changing line up has some new members this time around as we tackle Lewis Carroll’s famous nonsense poem The Jabberwocky. I haven’t read Carroll since I was a teenager so it was a cool trip down memory lane doing a bit of background research for this piece. Big Thanks to Gary Rees who first sent me an English reading to the work a few months ago. It sat on my desktop for a while as I wondered how tackle the work. After a while it seemed obvious the best (and most fun) approach might be to get some translations recording in other languages… so thats what we did, hope u enjoy 

The Jabberwocky features the following artists


Tuonela - Electronica
Yui Nikaido - Voice (Japanese)
Gary Rees - Voice ( English)
Raul Mainer - Voice (Spanish)
Antonella Eye Porcelluzzi - Voice (French)
Paolo D’Emilio - Voice (Italian)
Frank Wilke - Voice (German)
Hverheij - Guitar
MatVee - Electronica
Widar’s Spiritual Front - Electronica

Me - noise, digital orchestra/piano

More about Then She Reaches For The Gun

The project’s inspiration is two fold: Firstly its a homage to some of the stuff i grew up listening to like Mr. Bungle and other noisy bastards where anything goes, and often in quick fire succession and secondly it” a chance to work with an never ending stream of talented musicians that i have known for years either in real life Australia or via the Internet. Each track will no doubt change depending on who has sent me what. 

If you would like to be part of this ongoing project….

The process is simple, I collect a bunch of random recordings from people and then see what i can arrange from it. Nothing subtle here, just huge noisy fun : ) I am open to anyone that thinks they might like to be part of this mess. Drop me a message and i will send you my email. The only criteria is that i wont be using samples from TV/film/other music etc, so just original stuff played on instruments, field recordings, stupid drunk conversations etc. Cheers!

The Jabberwocky

Some more from the now defunct halls of the Rat Palace (RIP). This is Hexfarm together for the first time in many ears. After a lengthy free jam we stupidly/delightfully attempted to play through some of our old tunes - most lasted not very long before descending into " what the fuck came next"... This one is so abstract we bluffed our way through, although there is perhaps more recorded laughter than actual notes. A true story of Arachnid Love.

Rat Palace Jams - Hexfarm/If I Was A Spider

Dylan and I picked up the threads of this improv project after a few months break to pursue other things. Since #1 post a year ago ( https://soundcloud.com/no-mates-ensemble/duet-for-bass-guitar-and-a-huge-pile-of-crap1) the project has expanded - sometimes we don't even use a huge pile of crap but just the physical architecture of where we are set up ( look out for duet for Bass guitar and an empty warehouse), sometimes its a mini pile of crap, sometime 'no input'.. anyway the vibes the same - make some stuff up : )

Duet for Bass Guitar and a Huge Pile Of Crap#2

Its a slow album in development but heres the 2nd track of Intonarumori Duets with the wonderful AEP interpreting the Italian classic  Sì Viaggiare. The Intonarumori on this occasion is being played in a kind of pizzicato manner. Full album out sometime next year as this project is fitting in around other bigger projects. As always thanks for stopping by : )

Intonarumori Duets #2 -with Antonella Eye Porcelluzzi: Voice

Kirby/Ward droning out at the  Mill Lane warehouse we inhabited for the first half or so of 2023 (thanks Marek!). A surprise (to us too) bit of prog evolves in the middle then yep back to drone. The acoustics of this joint were in a league of their own. This was recorded and filmed with the place empty just before it was sold. A cavern to say the least. Also released today is the accompanying video .   https://vimeo.com/877694656?share=copy

Kirby/Ward - Warehouse Drone

Full album on bandcamp - mikebenoit.bandcamp.com/album/reconfi…-combinations
Mike Benoit is a wonderful sound artist who reached out to me this year with the idea of taking some raw improv piano playing and reworking them to produce original tracks. This appealed to me because 1 - I ain't the greatest piano player so this was flattering and 2 - I spend so much of my time reworking other peoples sounds it would be awesome to be on the receiving end for a change : ) .The album features 4 tracks, each one originally recorded on a different piano then given the treatments by Mike.

Preview: Mike Benoit & Mat Ward - Reconfigured Combinations

Hexfarm is

Phil Bywater - Saxophones/Flutes
Dane Renshaw - Drums
Mat Ward - Bass Guitar/Vox

Track 2 from Hexfarm - who meet once a year to jam for a couple of days then head back to their various corners of the world : )

Cost/Benefit Erection - Hexfarm

3rd track from Grundomma
Grundomma is myself and my brother Glenn Ward. It's been a few years since we actively made music together...but now seems like a good a time as any. We live a few 1000 kms apart across Australia so this a file swapping exercise. Pretty Fucken Colours features  samples from the documentary 'JIsoe"  - an hour long look at the life of legendary graffiti artist and train bomber Justin Hughes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp8ZNqaG-dE
Filmed in 2005 Its a fascinating look into disaffected Australian suburban life, street art and mental health. Thanks as always for stopping by. Grundomma salutes you : )

Pretty Fucken Colours

One of the first people I met on this platform was the wonderful Societe Cantine. He listened with open ears and offered indepth thoughts on my music and sparked conversation and experimentation. He, himself a mind-blowing sound artist, has released a  string of albums over the last decade that still sing with originality and genre breaking optimism. We danced round the edges of collaboration for a longtime, adding little bits of sound to bigger projects or producing video. Just before COVID hit the world we finally met in Paris - I had so much talk about, as did he.. like children we struggled with face to face language; his english is good, my french is terrible : ) We decided that we should finally start collaborating in depth and this is the first piece - conceived and played with, back and forth during lockdown COVID times. Naturally enough we titled it Language Gap after our initial stumbling meeting. It got an honourary mention in the 2023 One Minute Radio Festival and through that has been played all over the world . Fardeau Losange (as he now known) and I are working now, very slowly on some sort of album - it will take forever, but its almost secondary to the friendship that has grown around the music we have listened to, written and shared on this platform.   https://societecantine.bandcamp.com/album/lopacit-des-interlignes

Language Gap (Fardeau Losange/Mat Ward)

Then She Reaches For The Gun was a one off project, bringing together more than 50 artists from across the globe, releasing an album in late 2022  https://nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/the-vociferous-mapping-of-your-unlikely-future   But it was so much fun we are back for more.

The following Artists appear on this track :
Angostura Elwar -  2 x Behringer CRAVE analog synths/Yamaha P200 electronic piano 
Ambient Annie    -  Electronic
Banalytic  - Noise 
Chicago Word Brigade - Metal Electronica
Dane Renshaw  - Drums/Voice
Dani Kirby              -  Piano/Voice  
JZsuperstar - Doors/Keyboards/Water 
Libby Laksmi   -   Jazzy Loops      
Oberlin   -   Electric Guitar
Paul Miller - Electronic Percussion/Funk/Keyboards
Phil Bywater - Saxophone/Voice
Rosin Dust - Field Recordings/Saw/Violin
Robert Jefferson - Percussion
Wivresse - Electronica/Vocals
Mat Ward - Noise/Bass Guitar/Voice/Arrangement

Then She Reaches For The Gun - This Isn't Even Creating A Sense Of Space

Dedicated to Jello Biafra :)

Hexfarm is

Phil Bywater - Saxophones/Flutes
Dane Renshaw - Drums
Mat Ward - Bass Guitar/Vox

Track 3 from Hexfarm - who meet once a year to jam for a couple of days then head back to their various corners of the world : )

Drink Wank Cry - Hexfarm

Finally returning to Italy (Sardinia to be precise) post Covid in a couple of months to go on residency. In anticipation of this adventure I will upload a few Italy based works from festivals etc that i have made over the last few years. This work  premiered as part of the 2021 Helicotrema festival. Official arty wanky explanation below:
'Whilst my yearly travel to Italy from my hometown of Hobart in Australia is halted due to the pandemic I have been increasingly aware of other more subtle forms of travel. In particular, how sound itself travels has become an important aspect of my research with more sound files being sent across the globe and conversations with other artists via zoom and mobile phone replacing the face to face communication I have been used to. 

Sound travels at 1225kms an hour but ever since radio broadcasting was developed we can hear things from anywhere in the world instantly. Sound can ,in a way ,also time-travel - I can play recordings from the past and re-live the experience of being there. 

With these ideas in mind I wrote (the work  using a live stream audio stream from Venice that was mixed with a live local recording 13.5 hours (the time the sound would have taken to travel to Hobart) after it was broadcast. This combined audio recording of Venice and Hobart formed the raw material which was manipulated and arranged to evoke some of the many sensations of physical travel - movement, wonder, fear, enchantment, loneliness and adventure. 

Unedited field recordings from my archives are introduced at the 4 minute mark - one of the Grande Canal sent to me in 2019 and one of the main highway in my hometown which I sent to a colleague in Italy in 2020. These recordings capture the main routes of travel in their respective cities and bridge the past with the present creating a sound collage that travels through time.

In keeping with the theme of how sound travels the entire piece was written and mixed in 13.5hours, echoing the time it would take for sound to travel between Hobart and Venice.'

Viaggio di andata

Then She Reaches For The Gun was a one off project, bringing together more than 50 artists from across the globe, releasing an album in late 2022 nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/the-…ely-future But it was so much fun we are back for more.
This track features the following Artists :
Angostura Elwar -  2 x Behringer CRAVE analog synths/Yamaha P200 electronic piano 
Ariad Music- Clarinet/Percussion/Piano
Axel Weiß- Robot Voices 
Dane Renshaw -Drums
Loop(c)y - Electric Guitar 
Paul Miller - Electronic Percussion
Robert Jefferson - Akai Rhythm wolf/GakkenSX-150 ll/Korg Kaosilator
Ten Atmospheres - Field Recordings/Synths
Mat Ward - Double Bass/Noise/Arrangement

Then She Reaches For The Gun - Feather Hunt

Here's another track from our new album .... https://kirby-ward.bandcamp.com/album/rat-palace-sessions
The Rat Palace was our studio from when we first started seriously working together in 2016 until the landlords decided it was time for the artists to go and the tourists to come. It had been Mat's base since 2009 and hosted dozens of artists and musicians since it first started in 2006.
As the name suggests the place was run down, lacked various things like hot water, proper access and heating but it had a vibe, and the people we shared the space with all felt and helped to create it....Art was everything, day after night after day for years.
These 7 improvisations are a tiny fraction of the jams we had there, just a few highlights from 100s of jams. They are raw, unpolished and unconcerned with anything outside the moment. We rarely 'rehearsed' as such at the Rat Palace - just played.
Things come and things go - Vale Rat Palace, you were amazing.

Kirby/Ward - Swamp Fuzz

Then She Reaches For The Gun was a one off project, bringing together more than 50 artists from across the globe, releasing an album in late 2022 nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/the-…ely-future But it was so much fun we are back for more. In defiance of the usual 10 piece band approach of this project this track is just Johnny Python providing the historically accurate   text and voice with myself making  unneeded backing noise : )

Then She Reaches For The Gun - Their Stage Set Up At That Time Was Amazing

a live cut from our recent Rat Palace Sessions Album Launch. The piece is an improvisation based on a track from the album - which of course is also an improv.  So we are going down the rabbit hole here performing improvs based on improvs, each time changing into something slightly different.

Kirby/Ward LIVE - thumbs

Aporia is an ongoing Internet collab project based around the piano/bass duo 'KIrby/Ward'. Occasionally we capture something at rehearsal that we send to dummer Dane Renshaw (Japan) and guitarist Bruce Musser (U.S.A) to add their respective talents too. Its usually pretty spacious and dreamy : ) This time however the piece we sent out was really busy and instead of trying to pare it back we thought fuck it lets go full hog and make it super busy. So we asked Guitarist Axel Weiß (Germany)and Saxophonist Phil Bywater (Australia) to join the party. So The sextet was born. Of note is that none of the players heard any other parts of the work other than the original Piano/Bass recording, and in the  case of the Saxophones poor Phil didn't hear anything at all! I just used some work he had sent me. So all those nuanced interactions are complete sonic chance. as always Aporia may or may not record more music

Aporia #3 (Sextet)

Then She Reaches For The Gun was a one off project, bringing together more than 50 artists from across the globe, releasing an album in late 2022 nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/the-…ely-future But it was so much fun we are back for more.

Que feras tu quand tu m’auras perdue?
(What will you do when you have lost me?) features the following Artists :

Angostura Elwar -  2 x Behringer CRAVE analog synths/Yamaha P200 electronic piano 
Antonella Eye Porcelluzzi - Text/Voice
Ambient Annie - Electric Guitar/Electronica/Voice
Axel Weiß - Electric Guitar
Dane Renshaw  - Drums
Oberlin - Eurorack
Paul Miller - Keyboards
Phil Bywater - Saxophones/Voice
Scratch Kelly - Beats
Texmex Shaman - Electric Guitar
Vartch - Tone Drone/Voice
Mat Ward - Bass Guitar/Arrangement

Then She Reaches For The Gun - Que Feras Tu Quand Tu M’auras Perdue?

Water1

Geese Night time ( nightmare)

Cows Night Time

Cows Daylight

Then She Reaches For The Gun was a one off project, bringing together more than 50 artists from across the globe, releasing an album in late 2022 nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/the-…ely-future But it was so much fun we are back for more.

The Soul Craves Oblivion features the following artists:

Andrew Harper - Field Recordings/Dripping Tap
Ariad Music- Piano
Banalytic  - Chaos Intro
Bellai Pelegrim - Chaos Intro
Chicago Word Brigade - Chaos Intro
Dane Renshaw  - Drums
Glenn Ward - Electric Guitar
Frank Wilke - Voice
Håkan Skeneby - Chaos Intro
Johnny Python - Zappaesque Guitar Quartet
JZsuperstar - Circus Music
Libby Laksmi - Synth Bass  
Paolo D’Emilio - Chaos Intro
Phil Bywater - Tenor Saxophone
Raul Mainer- Chaos Intro
Stan Magendanz - Chaos Intro
The Windscale Blues Experiment - Soprano Saxophone
Timothy Korstad - Guitar/Text/Voice
Thomas Bergheim - Chaos Intro
Tobias Schmitt- Text
Widar’s Spiritual Front - Chaos Intro
W:I:L-o’ the-wisp - Chaos Intro
Wivresse - Text/Voice
Zanshin - Drums

Mat Ward -  Arrangement/Electric Bass/Field Recordings/Marimba/Noise 
Neska and Senna - Sniffing, Walking and Licking My Face

Then She Reaches For The Gun - The Soul Craves Oblivion

Recorded  12 October 2024 at Casa Bagnolo, Milis Sardinia. A performance for processed field recordings and improvised Bass Guitar. Written during my Nocefresca residency and performed as part of the AMACI Giornata del Contemporaneo festival 2024

Conversazioni Difficili con il Mare LIVE

Then She Reaches For The Gun was a one off project, bringing together more than 50 artists from across the globe, releasing an album in late 2022 nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/the-…ely-future But it was so much fun we are back for more.

Flashing My Vagina At Koalas features the following artists:
Ambient Annie - Electronica
Ariad Music - Piano
Belial Pelgrim - Digital Strings
Brendan Corey Benson - Electric Guitar
Carolyn Wigston - Voice
Chicago Word Brigade - Electronica
Dane Renshaw - Drums
Frank Wilke - French Horn
Hakan - Moog Voyager XL
Hverheij- Voice 
Johnny Python- Rocking Outro
Paolo D’Emilio - Electronica
Paul Miller - Keyboards
Sarah Megahertz - Speedway Noise
Scratch Kelly - Electronica 
Ten Atmospheres - Field Recordings/Synths
Thomas Bergheim - Electric Guitar
Tobias Schmitt - Processed Organ 
Widar’s Spiritual Front - Ms Pacman Slasher Sounds
Zanshin - Processed Drums

Mat Ward - Arrangement/Noise/Voice

Then She Reaches For The Gun - Flashing My Vagina At Koalas

2024 has seen Dani and I getting to play in a room that just happens to have a full size grand piano. Its called the Organ room due to it housing a 200 year old pipe organ but we have kept our dirty little hands of that instrument. Over summer we are going to select a bunch of these improvs for a new album to celebrate our time in this fantastic place

Kirby/Ward Organ Room Jam #12

Despite The Squalor Everybody Had A Good Time

In 2018 i  was part of a competition to remix broken orchestral instruments... needless to say i didnt win but it top fun.... More info below from the found sound nation website. Also i now have the library of all the samples if any one wants them let me know and I will send them - got everything from micro second one pitch solo instruments through to ensembles lasting for half a minute also ........

Found Sound Nation, in collaboration with Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, has meticulously recorded the sounds of over 800 of broken instruments in an effort to inspire the public to ‘adopt’ these instruments and raise funds to repair and return them to public schools throughout Philadelphia. For these recording sessions, we invited great musicians from around Philadelphia to improvise on damaged horns, flattened fiddles, splintered double bases, padless saxophones, leaky clarinets, and busted-up snares and created a sample library of hundreds of ‘wounded’ but magnificently unique instruments.

Pre Dinner Drinks

Re-worked Soundpiece from recordings taken in Florence that became part of La morte mi troverà vivo which investigates how noise can be a catalyst for communicating with the supernatural.
https://nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/la-morte-mi-trover-vivo

Florence Nightscape

Whilst trying in vain to finish of a stack of "nearly completed" ensemble pieces that have been sitting on my desktop for months i got rather frustrated and decided to make the task worse by starting a new one. I am not sure what happened but it kinda wrote itself and was done within a few sessions..... now back to the unfinished pile! 

Sleep Demons

Music and things that might sound like music by Mat Ward. Noise Art/A  Piano and Bass Duet with Dani Kirby/A 50 plus member Art Ensemble called Then She Reaches The Gun/Deep Research Into Luigi Russolo and his Intonarumori .. thats just the stuff I post regularly : ) Thanks to everyone thats ever stopped by. Music is The Best!

No Mates Ensemble

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