Altar Of Flies is the moniker of Mattias Gustafsson, a noise musician and electro-acoustic composer from Mjölby, Sweden.

“I document my life in sound”

Mattias Gustafsson: Altar Of Flies released its first release in 2006. I started recording in early 2005 when I got my first 4 track cassette recorder. I’m still using the same model. I have played in bands since the early 90s. The Jam Session was one of them. It started as a grindcore/sludge/hardcore/noise band 1998 and released a few vinyl.

What was your initial motivation to start making music?

My motivation for making music from the beginning was to escape boredom and frustration, I guess. Always something I had to do. It’s my life and will always be. It’s something I think of every waking hour even if there are months between the recordings.

Do you see an evolution in the music you’re making?

Absolutely. I can hear a lot of changes. It can be gear, influences et cetera. But also what happens in my life, feelings. I see it as my audio diary. I document my life in sound.

Is making “tape music” listening, rather than playing?

I don’t even know what tape music is when I think about it. I have always recorded to tape, and used magnetic tape in the compositions, but the sound sources/instruments can be whatever sound I am interested in, and any sound I’m enjoying at any moment. I both play the magnetic tape as an instrument and am listening to it, of course. If I don’t like what I hear I erase it. When I think about “tape music” I think about the pioneers from the 50s and forward. A big influence, of course.

Can one be a good player without being a good listener?

This is a really good question but I can’t answer it. I think so because it’s all about taste and what you like. Some of my favorite records are done by people who can barely play their instruments and it sounds like they have not been listening to each other but they made magic anyway so my answer in the end is: yes.

Do you see what you do as “making music”?

I don’t see myself as a musician. But yes I am making music and working with sound. I have even released two LPs of piano and tape compositions even if I can’t play the piano.

“It’s just all about the sound”

Do you make a difference between ‘high art’, such as academic electroacoustic music, and ‘low art’, such as noise?

No. I don’t make that difference anymore. Well, maybe it’s not 100% true since I categorize it like that in my record collection. But seriously, it’s just all about the sound. If I play a show with someone coming from the academic world or from the noise scene, in the end it’s just another human making a sound because they have an urge to do it. For themselves. Because they must do it. I hope so. It’s not for the money, success or fame anyway. So yes, for me it’s a big melting pot. But a divided one sometimes, yes. Maybe the biggest difference is just the presentation and the concepts. And I enjoy both.

Sometimes you use the name Altar Of Flies, sometimes Barstool Mountain or your own name.

Barstool Mountain is the more primitive, spontaneous, raw and back to the basics side of me, I think. Altar Of Flies and under my own name are sometimes very different but it also sometimes floats together. Every track and composition, I think, has a meaning in the big puzzle called life.

I was in Milan last Summer, where I bought a copy of your ‘Återblick’ 3LP. For me, it’s already a modern noise classic, on the level of Aaron Dilloway’s ‘Modern Jester’.

Thank you. I first released the ‘Inblick’ tape on my own Hästen & Korset label in 2020. After that I released a small edition of the ‘Överblick’ tape. Soon after that Oskar Brummel from White Centipede Noise mailed me and said he really liked the recordings, so he asked me if he could release the ‘Överblick’ recording. I think I had just finished the last recording in the trilogy called ‘Återblick’. I mailed him that. Sometime later he asked me if he could release the trilogy as a 3LP. The rest is history. Since he is a great guy who has an amazing label I said yes, of course. A dream came true and I still sometimes can’t believe it. He had also released the Altar Of Flies CD ‘Work Ethics’ before. The 3LP is meant to be three different recordings. Played one by one. Not to sit down and listen through all three recordings after each other. But if one prefers to do it that way, it can also work. But it was not intended like that from the beginning.