Twelve short stories from a very busy man
It takes a very brave musician to reach the cutting edge of music and to play chicken over the precipice. John Matthias is that man. Along with Nick Ryan he recently won the PRS New Music Award and the go-ahead for his ‘Fragmented Orchestra’ project, which involves putting twenty-four samplers around the country and the results being played through speakers in the FACT gallery in Liverpool. A talented violinist and dedicated reader of theoretical physics, John has already developed a new type of sampler, is a member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research, and has played on albums by Radiohead and Coldcut. If all that is a bit much to take in, try listening to ‘Stories From the Watercooler’, and things get a lot simpler.
For all the computer-based wizardry behind him, Matthias’ strength is in acutely-observed folk-rock. Tracks like ‘I Will Disappear’ are reminiscent of the Dandy Warhols at their ‘Thirteen Tales…’ height. ‘Blind Lead The Blind’ is a modern Roxy Music-meets-Bowie-lyrics, edgy and complex. You can hear the computerised stuff, but they’re not the be-all-and-end-all of the music. There’s plenty of ‘real’ instruments for the more traditionaly minded. Matthias’ deadpan vocals are a bit of a non-feature in themselves; they’re the focus, but much like the eye of the storm, they are a constant that everything moves around. The brooding ‘Stockwell Road’ is an example of a stripped-back Nick Cave-esque ballad.
‘Stories from the Watercooler’ is so called because, obviously, the twelve tracks here are stories in song form. The lyrics cover stories from the newspapers to Matthias’ personal experiences. Religion, war, economics, all come under Matthias’ critical eye. And isn’t that the purpose of folk? To observe and comment on the world around us. And this is modern folk, using computer technology as well as traditional music, and talking about a world that mixes computer technology and traditional attitudes. It’s not really folk, though. It’s too edgy for traditionalists, too rocky or indie or whatever. It's not really anything except what it is. It’s simple ballads blown to huge proportions, and big ideas reduced to computer blips and violin.