Elvis has left the building. There are other guys in there now. One of them is Matthew Ostrowski! He’s a stonecrusher, a rock jolter, a sound strapper! He straps the sounds across any unsuspecting individual within earshot, and holds on, tightening the sonics. He’s a space age wildman, a satellite savage, with ten long fingers, all doing their own thing. This is crunchy! Cereal electronics!

Ostrowski calls the CD “Vertebra”, and why not. This music could as well be some kind of paleontology. In that case he’s found a mass burial site for all kinds of extinct species. There’s no direction in here, no one idea, no theme – just a coexistence of all kinds of things and events, like a melting pot for the universe, or the thoughts of a god gone mad. There’s so much energy in here, so much motion, up, down, back, forth, in, out.

This might be called concrete music, but then again not. It could be called electronic music, but not. It could be called electronic improvisation, but not. It’s the most varied amassment of sounds I’ve heard so far, and mostly completely different sounds of short duration, soon disappearing, giving place for new sounds. If you have any tendency towards schizophrenia – don’t look! If you’re crazy but pretty controlled and harmonious, then listen in. It’s itching like mad, this music.

Ostrowski must have worked hard and long to get this to work, that’s for sure – and I’m sure he had a lot of fun! This is like a madman’s version of musique concrète from Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, or the WDR Electronic Studio of Stockhausen and Eimert turned into an electric storm, with sparks shooting off in all directions, making hair stand on end.

Ostrowski makes this heap of sonic residue work! It’s exciting, fun, crazy. We love it! You name it – we like it! Not anybody would dare to put out this kind of unstructured structure, taking off in all directions all the time. Ostrowski manages this. Good going! Keep on keeping on!

Ostrowski describes what he’s doing: “After so many things I could no longer enumerate, the nails, the frog, the sparrow, the bit of food, the pole, the nib, the lemon peel, the cardboard box, the chimney, the cork, the arrow on the ceiling, the gutter, the hand, the lumps of earth, the bed springs, the ashtray, bits of wire, toothpicks, pebbles, the chicken, warts, gulfs, islands, needles, I had been ready for anything, but not for a teapot. There is sort of an excess about reality, and after a while it can become intolerable” – and it’s all, it seems, experienced in a J. M. G. Le Clézio way, and if you’ve read him you see what I mean. Yeah, it’s even like the feeling in Allen Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl”, you know, that piece that goes “holyholyholy, everything is holy, everybody’s holy, everywhere is holy!” – and Ostrowski conveys this gut feeling, this almost cosmological identification, through his music. That is great! This is philosophy – live philosophy! – as much as music or art; and it stinks of bodily fluids, perspiration, urine – and soil, a lot of soil, and rocks, pebbles and sand. This music is completely saturated with sand, seeping through tiny holes in the soundweb, disturbing cobras in their hideouts!
Ostrowski goes on to say: “My music runs without stopping, and at vertiginous speed. The architecture is simultaneity: What happened to you today, and did you give more heed to the glance of a passing stranger than to the mighty work of creation? You’re probably on the right track if you did. Sweep up off the street that which is (and this is really Le Clézio stuff!): shattered, broken, twisted, pulverized, damaged, smashed, powdered – in short, dust”.

It’s like a very amplified extension of that famous CD called “The Cassette Mythos Audio Alchemy” on What Next Recordings and an LP from Uhlklang called “Knack On”, with Norbert Möslang & Andy Guhl getting their kicks from all kinds of household objects – and let’s throw in some Cage here too; maybe “Cartridge Music” (for amplified small objects) – but that still doesn’t characterize Ostrowski’s CD accurately. It’s more than that! All I can say is… get it and listen! If you don’t like it you’re a boring citizen!

This is free music for freethinkers! If you’re rooted in style or genre – forget it!"