Based in New York City, Matthew Ryals is a synthesist and composer-improviser with three full-length studio recordings in his discography. On September 5, he releases Exalge via Infrequent Seams which documents a live performance in Milan, Italy from November 2023 in collaboration with Federica Furlani, aka effe effe, a violist based in Milan. Ryals is heard on modular synth for the duration as effe effe’s viola and effects enter roughly mid-way through, the instruments entering into a superb tangle, moving from easily identifiable to impossible to distinguish who’s playing what. Exalge ends with a vinyl-only bonus track.
Too often, experimental music gets stereotyped as dry and formidable, particularly by those unable (or unwilling) to engage with the unique energies sparked by musical abstraction. Exalge presents a solid entry point for those who are perhaps intimidated by experimentation but are nonetheless open to or curious about the expansive range of its possibilities.
Right away in “Knots,” the opening piece in Exalge (the LP named after the Milan-based cultural center where the performance took place), Ryals establishes a weave of rhythmic patterns and in short order begins injecting (indeed disrupting) them with a wide variety of sonic outbursts. Along the way, the rhythms intensify as the cyclical elements undergo variations, and then comes a massive stretch of explosiveness that hits the ear like a 60 year old robot is having an epileptic seizure in a windstorm.
Excluding the concluding studio recorded bonus track “Crosstalk,” Exalge captures that continuous performance in Milan. “Surface Tension” follows with a similar approach as head in “Knots,” although there is more crackle and fuzz, and also more space in the unwinding. effe effe enters during “Ancient Crimes,” but only after an aural landscape that suggests the detonation of many bombs. Across this section, effe effe’s contribution is easy to recognize as viola, and likewise in the opening moments of “Limb Loosener.”
By the ending of this fourth segment, Ryals and effe effe have conjured up a sweet swirling maelstrom that wanes as the fifth piece, “Transducing the Soil,” begins in relative tranquility. By the end of this section, the conclusion of the performance, the intensity has risen without diverting away from the general tendency for calm. And it’s calm that ultimately usurps everything at the close of the performance.
The vinyl bonus track “Crosstalk” finds Ryal alone again on the modular synth, spitting, stuttering, shuddering, and squeaking forth in contrast to the dialogue that preceded it, delivering a vivid coda to Exalge’s striking and unified exchange of ideas.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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