Matthew Welch
The Upside Down World (for Glenn Branca)
2025
Table of the Elements
[Hydrogen] 1
EOE-001
Phono 12” LP, 180g vinyl

It is the ultimate instrument for rock 'n' roll, a clarion call to rebellion and freedom, and a catalyst of self-expression. In guttural roar and soaring celestial shriek, the bagpipes are invincible—and Matthew Welch owns the bagpipes. Look beyond his three World Pipe Band Championships, the Yale, Wesleyan, and Simon Fraser University degrees, and his acclaimed and inventive opera productions. Don’t necessarily discount his dextrous collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Julia Wolfe, and John Zorn, or his authoritative excursions into the undulating throb of experimental Indonesian gamelan. For an essential understanding of Welch’s command, absorb this blast of high-decibel harmonics, a solo album that upends expectations and asserts the primacy of raging, euphoric minimalism.

The Upside Down World (for Glenn Branca) is a deliberate choice to lead the new iteration of Table of the Elements. If the flayed ecstacies, bellowing drones, and molten-spark showers of harmonics recall a Founding Father of our constitutional wherewithal… that is also intentional. Tony Conrad had always intended to record a bagpipe piece with us. 

This 2001 effort was realized within the ruins of medieval Crossraguel Abbey in Ayrshire, Scotland. Dating to 1244, its granite confines groan with sanctified weight, imparting a reverberance akin to the Deep Listening explorations of Pauline Oliveros. Yet these walls are roofless, open to an endless spiritual expanse, and within them, Welch summons a furious conflagration, a whorl of aural flame, and a paean to righteous spirits past and future.

“As a pro-minimalist bagpiper and rock fan, I related to the hypnotic drones, purer intonation, and loudly buzzing timbre of the music of Glenn Branca. I aspired to create a solo bagpipe piece that could reflect Branca’s shimmering surfaces of rhythmic figures, dense harmonic clouds, sublime chorales, and symphonic scale. The pipes achieve a kind of polyphony and orchestral texture through rapid micro-rhythms played into the incredibly reverberant chapter house in the ruins of the medieval Crossraguel Abbey, Scotland. Recorded in 2001, just days before 9/11. Sad to see him pass in 2018, and so from vaults comes this dedication already to him, aged like a fine Scotch whisky, now a wailing requiem to his idiom. Rock in Protest, GB.”
— Matthew Welch

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“… Exquisitely ethereal, made up of delicate, transparent textures that hum with expressive tension. If Mr. Welch were a chef, he’d be the kind who pushes the boundaries of molecular gastronomy, transforming earthy ingredients into translucent beads of pure flavor.”
— New York Times

“Minimalist Phillip Glass-like cadences traversing a spectrum that ranges from a throaty rumble to primal scream, in a performance that exhibits a startling range …”
— Folk Radio UK

“Welch found a path to something I never thought I’d hear: the bagpipe as a lyric instrument, capable of poetic expression …”
— San Diego Union-Tribune

“A composer possessed of both rich imagination and the skill to bring his fancies to life.”
— Time Out NYC

“A work of bountiful and heartfelt creativity.”
– Gramophone

“The audience was spellbound.”
— New York Times

 

 

A Conduit for History Exploding in the Present Moment

TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS is a curatorial network and interdisciplinary platform, live-event presenter, and fine-arts publisher of print, audio, and film, lauded by Pitchfork Media as “a national treasure.” Since its origin as a record label in 1993, TotE has been dedicated to preserving, promoting, and promulgating works by international creators of experimental audio, electroacoustics, free-improvised performance, sonic sculpture, microtonality, and modern composition. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of sound and vision.  Each project demonstrates how a publishing concern might romp wild, unbridled from the carousel of convention.

•     •     •     •     •

"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”
—Grayson Haver Currin, Pitchfork

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism are beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, Jeff Hunt produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions — not ossified museum objects.”
—Thomas Peake, Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."
—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”
—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”
—Henry Rollins

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All contents ©1992–2025 Table of the Elements ®2025 Table of the Elements. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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