Matthew James Noone – The Other Side of Knowing
Independent – Out Now
The Australian-Irish Matthew James Noone plays the sarode, a 25-stringed lute used mainly in Hindustani music. He discovered his love for the instrument during a trip to India in 2003. What followed was an apprenticeship with Sougata Roy Chowdhury in Kolkata that lasted for over a decade, and continued with the UK-based sarodiya, K. Sridhar. However, his album ‘The Other Side of Knowing’ resists geographical categorisation. If anything, it encourages the opposite, with songs that seem to embrace the whole universe.
The record was conceived during the pandemic, “recorded on Noone’s land in rural East Clare in a small cabin during COVID lockdown from April-June 2020” on a custom-built electroacoustic instrument dubbed ‘sarode na suill’. It involved a lot of experimentation with field recordings, different microphones, and sound production techniques, all with the hope to “access something more subconscious, a kind of unknowing”.
Some songs are meditative, reminiscent of Alice Coltrane’s ‘Journey in Satchidananda’, and waft through the air with the ease of incense smoke. The heavy drones in Morning, the rain and the improvised, melancholy sarode in Our Grandfathers, the consistent pulse underneath the interweaving melodies in Boots for Bill all share the same introspective pull.
From then on, the album moves into more unsettling territory. Improv (I) jerks me out of my rumination with sounds evocative of a cat clawing on the glass. The start of The Cabin reminds me of the moment when subtitles on Netflix announce ominous music until a sound resembling wind chimes brings a nervous focus to the composition. In 19, a radio voice talks about COVID and lockdown, with distortion and feedback reigning supreme, mirroring the chaotic, disturbing world we’ve been living in this past year.
‘The Other Side of Knowing’ finishes with a sense of hope, entering a stage of quiet peace with its closing songs, without the mantralike heaviness of the first tracks or the nervous uncertainty of the middle of the album. The Robin Red sounds like a new beginning, the first ray of sunshine on a stormy day. Empire of Dirt doesn’t have a clear ending and feels more like rolling through on your way home, similar to Buttercup with its sweet melodies lifting the listener out of fog and gloom.
The record defies genre with roots in Indian classical music, electronic influences, and exploratory production techniques – it’s traditional yet experimental, meditative yet unsettling. Matthew James Noone’s compositions push and pull, bringing peace while challenging the mind. He lifts the listener to a different plane of existence, and when the sound of the rain returns in the closing track Blue Sunset, I realise he was just waiting for me to catch up. He was on that plane all along.
Order via Bandcamp: https://matthewnoone.bandcamp.com/album/the-other-side-of-knowing