Matt Valentine (MV) is a maverick figure of the ‘alternative’, ‘underground’ folk scene. Through his organization of the Brattleboro festival in 2003 he is credited with inventing the term ‘Free Folk’ and, indirectly, prompted the first use of the label New Weird America to describe the loose collective he is part of.
At the last count I have about 16 of his albums mostly with his partner and soul mate Erika Elder (EE) . Two recent ones were on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label but most on limited issue vinyl or cdr so have to be grabbed fast or scored on p2p sites.
Even after listening to all this music I still find it difficult to get a real handle on the man and place him or can name a key track or album that can be counted as representative. His work is uneven, self indulgent but curiously addictive.
MV began as a founder member of influential The Tower Recordings collective based in New York, contributing to their singular brand of ‘futuristic-folk’ and ‘cosmic drones’. The online ‘zine Stylus described their sound well as ” a dense stewy, sensual mass of pseudo-synchronized sensitive ugliness broadcast from several different artistic galaxies all at once“.
Other reviewers in trying to get a handle on this kind of material grope around for suitable reference points. They line up the usual suspects like the ramshackle acid folk of The Incredible String Band or the strange atmospherics of the cult Pagan horror movie The Wicker Man.
When these fail to cover all the bases, an air of desperation sets in and the comparisons become more delirious and random, ranging from Fairport Convention to The Velvet Underground or from The Butthole Surfers to Sun Ra. All this doesn’t help much in defining their sound but communicates the fact that the music is as mystifying as it is mystical, and is more rewarding to experience than classify.
One recurring theme is the reference to the way the music sounds as if it were beamed in from another planet. This is not surprising since, on one album, the band dub themselves a ‘fraternity of moonwalkers’ and many of their track titles have references to space travel or make interstellar associations .e.g Taste of Moon, Spaceball, Lunar Discotheque . ‘ Intergalactic Housing Don’t Bother Me’
MV does little to bring these extraterrestrial musings down to earth. He admits a fascination for the skewed sci-fi visions of Phillip K. Dick , and frequently refers to his music as a species of ‘lunar blues’. A self presentation on his My Space site reads:
“still orbiting the earth in Vermont is matt ‘mv’ valentine, the brawn of the tower recordings, and erika ‘ee’ elder the CEO of Heroine Celestial Agriculture together with their dog zuma they run the child of microtones terran library of exploratory music and sing songs with american avatars ‘the bummer road’ “
As with his solo stuff it’s hard to find a unifying thread or any consistent pattern to the Tower Recordings’ releases . A good overview of MV/EE releases can be found in an article by Byron Coley for Arthur magazine.
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