Sabotage tweaks a knob on his E-MU PX-7 during his performance in The West Coast Championship Controller Battle. Photo - SpaceCat Photography

Matt Sabotage rocked the audience and the judges with an impressive display of controllerism talent at The West Coast Championship Controller Battle in San Francisco last June. Even though this was his first music competition, Sabotage had no problem blowing the other competitors out of the water.

Using one of the few laptop-free setups in the competition, he tied for third place and took home a fresh bundle of gear to add to his already powerful arsenal.

We had the opportunity to speak with him about his experience.

Controllerism.com: What motivated you to enter the Controller Battle?

Sabotage: I produce and perform live electronic music and it seemed a good way to get some exposure.  I saw a flyer at the local hacker space, Noisebridge, while I was repairing my cell phone.

C: Tell us about your setup, why did you choose it?

S: I use live hardware electronic instruments and effects processors, samplers, etc.  In my past, most of my professional jobs have been computer jobs, so I like using instruments as opposed to computers.

C: How did you create the sounds you were performing with?

S: I sequence and synthesize the instruments with an E-MU digital synthesizer.  I have two effects processor-samplers which I use to process, sample, loop and glitch the audio.  I also take audio samples from various sources like TV shows, records or wherever and then I put effects on them.  I have an optical controller that allows me to scratch audio with my sampler.

C: Were you nervous?

S: With all the talented competitors, I was pretty nervous, especially since I competed against people like Edison and Colfax who I had only seen in videos before as a fan and had been very impressed.

C: Did you learn anything you would like to share with other controllerists seeking to enter battles?

S: If you have disks like I do, keep them with you and make sure they don’t get hurt.  When they were moving the tables, one of my disks fell off and landed in some beer puddle and I lost some of my samples.

C: Was there anything you would have changed about your sets?

S: I’m learning and changing stuff all the time so yes, but I am happy with what worked out.

C: Most importantly, did you have fun?

S: Definitely.

Be sure to check out Sabotage’s performances and all of the other performances on the battle video page.