Bands and Collaborations

Played in countless bands over the years and had the joy of collaborating

with dozens of musicians and artist from all over the world.

These are a few of the projects,

most of them still going when time permits





Hexfarm

Drums/Sax/Bass/Voice…..and a whole lot noise. Hexfarm, due to the international locations of it’s members get together once a year to thrash out some free improvisation. During the rest of the year they write and record remotely, fashioning the riffage into things that could be called songs… some even have vocals

Mat Ward - Bass/Vocals

Dane Renshaw - Drums

Phil Bywater - Saxophones/Flute

Aporia

Aporia is an ongoing Internet collab project based around the piano/bass duo 'Kirby/Ward'. Occasionally we capture something at rehearsal that we send to dummer Dane Renshaw (Thailand) and guitarist Bruce Musser (U.S.A) to add their respective talents too. Various other musicians have also appeared on Aporia tracks including Axel WeiB (Germany), Phil Bywater (Australia) and Dylan Banks (Australia)

Duet For Bass Guitar And A Huge Pile of Crap

A duo project with Dylan Banks….conceived when the two of us were standing in a beautiful performance space and wondered what we would do in it if someone was kind enough to allow us the opportunity. It was quickly decided we should assemble an enormous pile of old car bodies, plant equipment, whatever which Dylan would play whilst I attempted to improvise some sort of bass work over the top

Fardeau Losange/Mat Ward

Cy and I met via Souncloud years ago, sharing a love for a number of musical genres, After a decade or so of chatting, and meeting in Paris in 2020 we finally decided to write some music together.

Grundomma

Grundomma is a family affair, me and my brother Glenn. Growing up we had a recording project named Grundomma and have the kept the name as we create sonic oddities when other projects make room. We live on different sides of Australia so this is all done via file swapping. Lots of sampling is at the core of Grundomma, again this is something we grew up doing so its cool to revisit with all the modern tech.

Intonarumori Trio 

Formed in 2018, The Intonarumori Trio is Danielle Kirby, Mat Ward and Dylan Banks. All three are Hobart based artists whose individual professional practices all span 20 plus years. They have diverse artistic backgrounds that include painting, instrument and theatre design, installation, classical music, noise- art, graphic design and academic research. They have all exhibited, published and performed extensively across Australia as well as undertaken international art-based residencies.  

The trio explore the more occult-centric aspects of Russolo’s practice, approaching performances as a ritualistic space to play with the idea of connection and communication beyond the human realm. 

Russolo believed, and pursued the idea that noise could be used as a bridge to spiritual understanding. He sought to congure and transform energy through the Intonarumori’s ability to ‘spiritualise’ noise. 

Performances by the Trio are pure improvisation, allowing the space and the air to guide the players. The clips are from various performances and studio sessions 2018 - 2025 

Intonarumori Trio in a couple of other projects -

 

One offs

A few examples of one off collaborations ( occasionally a second track has eventuated , sometimes even and album)

 
 
 

The wonderful Frank Wilke has recently sent me a bunch of files for a new big project involving a heap of great musicians. As a warm up to this new project, and for a bit of fun I put together this little thing. Always a great pleasure to work with Frank : ) check out his stuff @brass-lines

BANDCAMP LINK for free download https://nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/

Hi Juan and I have been swapping some files over the last few months with a simple philosophy. Take the file given and manipulate/add/subtract. Its all one shot stuff - no back and forth or excessive polishing, just free experimentation with sound, instruments, frequencies, noise and silence. Really enjoyed this project, its unrestrained and unorthodox - freedom really : ). Here is the Bandcamp link if you would like to hear the entire 9 track album. Cheers Mat and Juan https://nomatesensemble.bandcamp.com/album/voltage-dirt-juan-a-mi-ana-osca-mat-ward https://soundcloud.com/juan-a-mi-ana