Matanzas, by MJ Guider

Matanzas

by MJ Guider

supported by

:()~=~ SAD GODS / jonathan atchley ~=~ (): thumbnail

more...

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$2 USD or more
limited edition lathe cut 7"
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Lathe cut by hand on clear plexi by Cryptic Carousel. Includes a fold-out insert and liner notes, printed, assembled, stamped, and numbered by hand, housed in a clear vinyl sleeve...plus a button.

Includes unlimited streaming of Matanzas via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Sold Out
2nd press "Viñales Edition" limited lathe cut 7"
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Second edition with inverted labels and cover art featuring the Viñales side of Matanzas on an insert card made to suit - printed, stamped, and numbered by hand...plus a sticker.

Includes unlimited streaming of Matanzas via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Sold Out

	1.	Matanzas 04:32		buy track
	2.	Viñales 04:08		buy track

about

Although geographically not very far from New Orleans, my mother’s native Cuba has always felt like another planet. My knowledge of it had been filtered through snippets of family conversations and the politically tinted lens through which Americans are made to view Cuba. I knew the only way I would ever understand this place that accounted for half of my heritage - the only way I could ever know it - was to go there.

In 2017 my mother and I took the trip. Acute awareness of how rare and fleeting it was stoked my urge to document it, so I methodically snapped photos and recorded the sounds of Cuba on a small field recorder. If I could bring the images and audio back, I could take my time to process and glean understanding.

When I was finally ready to sit with what I had chronicled about a year later, I found it to be hilariously flawed. Many of the photos were taken from behind the window glass of a moving vehicle, my own reflection leaving an imprint on what I was trying to capture. My audio recordings were even further contaminated by near-constant unintelligible murmuring of fellow travelers chattering in English, and the sounds of my own awkward handling of the recorder while I tried to get a perfect take on the fly. It was absurd. It felt symbolic of the entire mission.

I still had to know, so I set about translating. If there was something to be understood in what I had gathered, I’d use the tools I have to find meaning. From bits of sound extracted and manipulated, I wrote two songs - one inspired by my mother’s province of Matanzas, and another for beautiful Valle de Viñales in Pinar del Río. This work was a brief aside while writing Sour Cherry Bell, so I finished the songs and filed them away. Later on, during the summer of 2020, I went back to them. I found, again, that the message was lost and I didn’t understand. Again I needed to translate. I remixed the songs, the remixes then became the songs, and the translations brought meaning - at least in the moment.

This release in its physical form mirrors the understanding that I came to through this process. Here, the medium is as much a part of the story as what is being told through it, like Cuba translated through me: the songs, and even the images are translated through hand-cut grooves in plexiglass, where the noise, imperfection, and obfuscation of the format becomes part of the message, changing it.

credits

released May 4, 2021

written / recorded / produced +
design / photography by Melissa Guion

mastered by James Plotkin

dedicado a Ileana y Mirella

modemain 2021 / MODEM-01

license

about

MJ Guider New Orleans, Louisiana

contact / help

Contact MJ Guider

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like MJ Guider, you may also like:

Shade
by Grouper

supported by 34 fans who also own “Matanzas”

Reminds me of getting back home after a long road-trip. That feeling of relief. The peace of being in your own presence.
go to album
Daughter
by Raum

supported by 27 fans who also own “Matanzas”

beautiful the album seems like a walk through nature with so many little details surrounding u love it _crysknife
go to album
Everywhere at the end of time
by The Caretaker

supported by 27 fans who also own “Matanzas”

Actually astounding and emotionally moving, creating a community that I have been proudly a part of for 2 years OrsonXD
go to album
I´m Not Smiling
by Asher Levitas

Tender and melancholy ambient pop from Asher Levitas, blurring the lines between imagined environments and real, highly personal ones. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 1, 2022
go to album
Hyaline
by Maria BC

The debut full-length lives in a middleground between ambient music and psych-folk. Bandcamp Album of the Day May 31, 2022
go to album
The Space Voyage
by Secrets of the third planet/S3P

Take a trip through the cosmos with these gorgeously expansive songs, that move from haunting ambiance to driving EBM. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 6, 2021
go to album
Because of a Flower
by Ana Roxanne

supported by 25 fans who also own “Matanzas”

Bought the vinyl. Spectacular use of sound with some insane vocals overhead. David Elias
go to album