Thesis -
Those are strange times to live in, urgent times. Even more strange times to make art. What for? How?
Do we even have the right (don't give me freedom of speech) to make abstract art? Abstract art was cool waaaay back in the XXth when it served its main purpose, shattering art conventions. But even then it's never been granted that it took a political stance against the pervading forces of political reaction. A piece of abstract art never fed the starving, never freed the underdog from capitalism or the government. Art is art, sadly.

Antithesis -
Nope. Sorry. Art is art, sadly.

Synthesis -
I have nothing more to offer. There's no antithesis, no synthesis. So allow us to make the political statement anyway, and listen to this music as art that was inspired by gut feelings, of the insurgent kind, yet unsure of its means. We know how to do this (and a few other things maybe), so all we could do was to use this to express that. This is a barricade of sound. It wants to stand in the way of the reactionnary forces of market using violence more and more openly to wipe away democracy, make us lone, scared, subservient nonentities. The barricade of sound will never be high enough. Sound is just atoms vibrating. Come the military police, come the reasonable men in suit and tie, they will huff, they will puff, the atoms will disband, the barricade will crumble. This music will be labelled degenerate.

Those are strange times to live in, urgent times. Even more strange times to make art. Since we recorded this music, in November of 2019, other threats have appeared. A deadly disease is sending the West in full lock-down (the fate of those outside the West never mattered). There are chances this music will not be presented live to an audience. Nobody knows exactly when we will be allowed to leave our houses. And when we can finally do so, the world will have changed, inevitably. « Public Health Requirements/Imperatives/Issues » will more and more frequently dictate when, where, how artists make art. There will be good art, and bad art. One that thinks right, another that spreads « fakes news », that « distresses the public ». What we play here will be the kind of things that you'll find in unauthorized gatherings. You know it already is somewhere else on the planet. Music for lock-downs. You think this is a gross overstatement? We'll see what the pattern is after the 9th coronavirus outbreak by the end of the 20s.

"Messe pour les temps pressants [A Mass For Urgent Times]" is not an hommage to Pierre Henry. This is a pun. If you like this kind of humor, and our music, and those liner-notes, look up « confirmation bias » on Wikipedia while you still have the internet. It was recorded on November the 2nd, 2019, by Other Matter: Michel Kristof, electric guitar, amplifiers, effects, arthritis, bad case of asthma, Julien Palomo, digital synthesizers, shit immune system and Christine Webster, analogue tabletop synthesizers, Lyra8 and mix of the whole sound chaos, also VR artist and specialist (find us a way out of the Matrix, Christine), severe case of asthma. Collectively, potential casualties. Michel and Christine are Yellow Jackets, the ongoing grassroots protest movement that has demonstrated every single saturday against the neo-liberal policies of Emmanuel Macron, president of France, since October of 2018. We didn't chatter music much, on this evening. The talk was mostly politics. Beers and Dutch gin, especially Dutch gin, fuelled the inspiration. Oooo the days of drunk, dishevelled degenerate artists, how commonplace.

Later on, we were browsing Michel's portfolio of pictures taken during the Yellow Jackets demonstrations. We agreed on this cover picture. It is uplifting. Thousands of voices break through the clouds of teargas, towards the suns of hope. We like to think that this is what Paris looked like on many an insurrection against hated regimes. We'd love to think we'll see that again, we'd love to think it will one day succeed and we can play this music in the open, a barricade of sound for this barricade of people, a mass to celebrate the collapse of higher powers.