Al Karpenter

Al Karpenter are carpenters of life in the form of a band consisting of Álvaro Matilla, Marta Sainz (bass, vocals), Enrique Zaccagnini (percussion, electronics, vocals), and Mattin (computer, drums, vocals). Born in the Basque Country’s experimental underworld and raised on a diet of no wave, noise, improvisation, and dissent, Al Karpenter fuse improvisation/free jazz, Afrobeat, computer music, and garage punk into a strange sonic world. Their music is less a style than an eruption, where disembodied vocals, fractured rhythms, and blistering textures form a protest anthem for the end of genocide. The Wire calls their music “post-genre punk”, a fragile bricolage approach where everything can be part of constructing an impossible music for our times. However, this is not confused music. As a matter of fact it is extremely precise in its disregard for conventions. Critics have compared them to Brigitte Fontaine, Sun Ra, Fushitsusha, Alternative TV, Hype Williams, and Henry Flynt, but none quite capture the project’s exuberant instability.