ECHO CLUB LIVE, SATURDAY DECEMBER 7TH 2002, 23H DAMPFZENTRALE BERN: SAFETY SCISSORS (FORCE TRACKS / CONTEXT / PLUG RESEARCH) LIVE, DJ SWO (CUE CENTRAL EUROPE)

ECHO CLUB, SUNDAY DECEMBER 8TH 2002, 22H SUPERMARKET ZURICH: SAFETY SCISSORS LIVE, DJ BAD BAXTER (STATTMUSIK), METROPOLITAN ENVIRONMENT PROJECTED BY CUE

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Biography from context media:

The boundary between 'artist' and 'geek' is fine, yet frequently unacknowledged or concealed by overzealous intellectuals. MPC (i.e., Safety Scissors) does little to hide his social awkwardness in the quirky techno he produces and performs. If anything, he would rather admit to being a geek than to being an 'artist' or a 'musician'. 'Anonymity is much more interesting. It's silly when people say they are an artist or a musician. They're just trying to cover up for something else- that they don't have a girlfriend or smell bad or suffer from alcoholism'.

Although he is the ultimate dork debonair, MPC does not over-obsess with the computing process. Singing on his latest works for Force Tracks and Plug Research, MPC experiments with camp techno. Upcoming releases on Carpark and his own label Proptronix similarly pervert techno formula with an electric ukelele and bubble gum.

MPC has an abstract and clumsy approach to making music and distinguishes himself from the intellectualism of abstract/minimal techno. The proud drop-out of the art school establishment pursues neither expressions of unmediated human feeling found in Abstract Expressionism or regimented lines of stucture in minimalism. Rather, with subtlety and smoothness, he references both in his unique sense of sarcasm.

When MPC is not sucked into the creative vortex of his studio or dragged out of town by his duties to music audiences worldwide, he likes to eat ice cream and ride his bicycle. Recently, he has fallen off his bike and sprained his wrist. In another incident, he injured himself in an unmentionable area while hopping between wooden posts.


Discography:

Rubber Stamp EP: Context 01
Free Range Deductions EP: Force Tracks 13
Neomoronics EP: Tektite 08 (Moron)
Delay 05: Delay 05 (split with Sutekh)
Grounds For Foreground EP : Force Tracks 22
Plug Research 10" (split with Languis)
Lost at B EP : Cytrax 16
Either Or EP: Plug Research
Parts Water CD/2LP : Plug Research
Compilations and Remixes:
Deadpan Escapement: Belief Systems 04 (with Sutekh and Twerk)
Second Array: Tektite 05 (compilation) (Moron)
Deadpan Escapement Reconstructed: Context 04 (compilation)
Forcelab 02 (compilation)
Material Problem: Cytrax 15 (remix of Kit Clayton)
Through the Cell Wall: Kodama 13 (compilation)
Banana Republic, Volume 1: Beta Bodega Coalition (compilation)
Intermissions: Plug Research (compilation)
Context 06 (compilation)
SF Bass: Exact Science 01 (compilat ion)
Frustache - whitelabel : Hefty (remix of Slicker)

Album review from pitchforkmedia:

Safety Scissors
Parts Water
[Plug Research; 2001]

Rating: 8.5 (8.5-8.9: Exceptional; will likely rank among writer's top ten albums of the year)

Safety Scissors is one of several monikers chosen by Minneapolis-born, San Francisco resident Matthew Patterson Curry. And in this case, the alias is wholly appropriate. Parts Water is essentially a glitch-dub album with occasional vocals. But just as the round-edged scissors that are given to kindergartners to cut out construction paper shapes are, for the most part, blunt, Curry has blunted and de-hazarded glitch music as we know it.
Like his peers, Kit Clayton and Sutekh's Seth Horvitz, Curry believes that glitch could stand to be incorporated into genres other than dub (I'm looking at you, Stefan Betke). The most visible manifestation of this interpolation of glitch is, of course, Björk's Vespertine. But even though, like Vespertine, Parts Water sports Curry's untarnished, self-sung vocal tracks, the album is also easily likened to Herbert's masterful Bodily Functions. No, Parts Water doesn't go all out for the dancefloor like Bodily Functions generally does, but it hints that, with some minor remixing, he could find himself the creator of several dancefloor staples.

Parts Water opens with "Two Letter U's," in which Curry applies his sonic malfunctions to a slow go-go swing, and contrasts a loping swagger with a stuttering Hammond organ figure. "A Wash" opens with guitar twangs tugged at by glitches, until a horn imposes rhythmic order and ushers in the gospel organ that flourishes towards the end of the track.
Curry turns to glitch balladry for "Stormy Weather," using vocal treatments similar to the ones Herbert messed with on Bodily Functions. Harpsichordian sounds tinkle in and out of the mix as Curry inserts the same terse hi-hat sounds that characterized Neil Landstrumm's Bedrooms and Cities. Disconcerting harmonic wobbles are then allowed to breach the meniscus of the melody as Curry sings a heartfelt admonition: "So don't make up your mind/ Your vision may be cloudy/ So now is not the time/ We're in for stormy weather/ I feel it in my knees." With the bass drum barely even a presence, "7 Glasses a Day/7 Days a Week" relies on Landstrumm's taut percussion set to propel the track. Under the trebly rhythms, an intoxicated Basic Channel-style organ pokes around, only to be accosted by a marauding band of dub echoes.
"Your Beautiful Feet" begins with calm tones and a stuttering bass guitar. Then, after Curry reveals himself in disconsolate vocals ("I'm a puddle/ Down on the street/ Watch where you're standing/ I'm six feet deep"), wobbly chords bubble up from beneath to replace the gentle keyboard's song. Though glitch-bossa makes its debut on "Esperanto," Curry returns to the fuzzy dub of Pole for the drifting clunks of "Before (Less)." On "(Water)phone," he sings surrealism about waiting for someone to pick up the phone he's dialing. After a scratchy miniature, lo-lo-lo-fi New Order-ish guitar joins the fray and Curry concludes that the person he wants to talk to is in the shower, and that the running water is drowning him. Curious. But the aquatic theme that permeates Parts Water is never more prominent than during "Sailor Stripes"-- a viscous melody figure swims through shards of sub-surface sunlight, like some winding eel searching for a plankton which is represented by fragments of human humming.
"Dipsy Daisy" stays submerged in Curry's ocean, but for once, he allows his kickdrums to pound, taunting them that they can break the surface and make it to dry land without a remixer's assistance, but only when he permits it. After the upbeat, cowbell-driven "Slipper," Parts Water closes with "Mirror (Wet)." The track not only reprises most of Curry's lyrical concerns ("I drank all the water I can drink/ I can't drink anymore/ My eyes are floating in my head") but also the deft incorporation of glitch-dub into unexpected song forms.
What impresses me above all about "Mirror (Wet)" is that Curry has written chord progressions and intriguing melodies that I've come to associate with his labelmate, Low Res. "Mirror (Wet)" could have been one of the terran tunes the extra-terrestrials captured on Res' Approximate Love Boat, the Plug Research release that first alerted me to the possibilities of applied glitch. However, Parts Water stands apart. Surely, we must afford Curry the same laurels we've bestowed upon Matthew Herbert and Björk.

-Paul Cooper, pitchfork media


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