PRESS

“The musical accompaniment, the Matti Bye ensemble, was spectacular once again. I wish these people would follow me around and accompany my life, or the bulk of films I see. If they play sometime and you have the ability to see them, you owe it to yourself. Their soundscapes are unique, fitting, and enormously flexible to any situation.” — Gunnar Hede

“Poseidon, by Lau Nau, is one of the most important works of art I have published this year.” - Niko Peltonen, Rumba 4/2017.

“Matti Bye's work is also concerned with the tension, which exists between moving image, sound and music. He has recently engaged with collaborative projects involving an esthetic and performative language proper to the contemporary visual arts. Beyond the medium, his work takes the viewer on a unique and lyrical journey of the world of dreams and illusions through a multi-sensorial experience of storytelling.” — Myriam Blundell

“Lau Nau constructs her expression so attentively and inviolably that the associations generated by music are exceptionally strong.” - Hannu Linkola, Soundi 11/2017.

“Poseidon is an excellent record.” - Oskari Onninen, Helsingin Sanomat, 29.11.2017.

“Original music for silent film has become an art form in itself, and Matti Bye is a veteran in this field. For eleven years he has played piano to silent films at the film institute. Pretty soon he began to avoid seeing the films in advance but improvised directly from the screen. There he developed a dramaturgical fingertip sensibility.” — Calle Pauli, Dagens Nyheter March 12th, 2001

“A stark, elegant, haunting score by Finnish experimental composer Lau Nau – aka Laura Naukkarinen – balances ambient mood painting with eerie sound design, adding to the film’s quietly bewitching power.” - Stephen Dalton, Ubiquarian 30.30.2020

“The atmospheric, experimental music by Finnish composer Lau Nau serves as an accompaniment to the dense sound design in which there always seems to be wind blowing, insects chattering or chirping, leaves rustling, or drops of water fizzing as they land. It makes for a truly immersive viewing experience.” - Vladan Petkovic, Cineuropa 6.4.2020

CREDITS

LIMITE (1931)

Directed: Mario Peixoto Screenplay: Mario Peixoto Cinematography: Edgar Brasil Starring: Olga Breno, Tatiana Rey, Raul Schnoor, Brutus Pedreira. First movie projection Rio de Janeiro, 17 May 1931, Brazil.

Length: 120′

BIO

MATTI BYE + LAU NAU

With a contemporary musical approach to accompany silent films and abstract visual non sound films Matti Bye and Lau Nau renew the experience for the audience today. Making improvised and composed music using acoustic prepared, processed and electronic sounds blended in a sensitive and powerful way for these beautiful images. The music becomes so close to the visual expression, when Matti Bye and Lau Nau build an emotional full sound-image experience that is every time unique, a sensitive interaction only for this moment.

MATTI BYE

Matti Bye is widely considered as one of Sweden's most important composers of film scores and an extraordinary performer with his own, incomparable style of improvisation on the piano. He is also widely recognized for having written a series of innovative scores for such early Swedish silent film classics as Phantom Carriage by Victor Sjöström, Häxan by Benjamin Christensen, and Gösta Berling Saga by Mauritz Stiller, now included on a 6 DVD box set released by Svensk Filmindustri, SF, as well as countless other silent films. Last year he wrote the score for Academy Award nominee Jan Troell's latest feature Everlasting Moments and Stig Björkmans "Scenes from a playhouse" – a documentary about Ingmar Bergman. His foray into music started with the violin, the clarinet and the contrabass. However, none of these instruments matched his melancholic and romantic musical temperament. It wasn’t until he began to study the piano with an old Russian teacher that he found his true means of expression. Amazed by the sonic richness of the piano, it became his musical weapon of choice.

Matti Bye's musical universe is a world of layered, imperceptibly shifting atmospheres. He employs instruments experimentally to create musical spaces for the listener to inhabit. To walk into this world is to discover sound within sounds, rooms within rooms. While his style of play is super-light and uninhibited, his live performances are always masterly paced, never straying from the higher purpose of the music.  His musical output is approachable, sensual and melancholic, and captures perfectly the fragility of the Nordic light in his native country.

For years Matti performed live to screenings of silent masterpieces by directors like Fritz Lang, Victor Sjöström and Jean Vigo at the Cinematheque in Stockholm. The importance of this period for his musical education can probably not be overstated. His time at the Cinematheque enabled him to hone his ear and intuition, helping him to learn to trust his spontaneity in the process.

Eagerly exploring new creative contexts and avenues of expressions, he frequently works with other artists and musicians. 

LAU NAU

Lau Nau, aka Laura Naukkarinen, is one of the more interesting names in the Finnish contemporary music scene. A composer, music producer and performer whose music is imbued with a cinematic breadth of vision and idiosyncratic, finely honed sound world. Lau Nau works using both acoustic and electronic instruments, from traditional instruments and singing voice to analogue synthesisers and field recordings. While her songs are luminous, melancholic pieces of experimental chamber folk music, her scores for films and sound installations are experimental studies of sound.

Lau Nau’s first solo albums were released in the US (Locust Music 2005 & 2008), winning acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork and The Wire. To date Lau Nau has released seven albums in Europe, USA and Japan, garnering prize nominations like Teosto-, Emma-, Jussi- and Femma prizes. Nowadays she is well known for her music to films, silent films, theatre, dance, multi channel sound installations and lectures about composing. 

Besides of Lau Nau, Laura Naukkarinen plays also in an improvisational group Kiri Ra! and in duo with Matti Bye. She has been playing in various improv bands as IAX, Maailma, Hertta Lussu Ässä, Kiila, Avarus, the Anaksimandros, Päivänsäde, Kemialliset Ystävät, Chamellows and others.

www.launau.com