December last year, Durban songwriter, Matt Vend recorded his 5th album which sees him delving in lo-tech electronic music as well as his signature acoustically driven sound. He is calling the new direction Anatronic, which the songwriter describes as electronic music delivered in a very organic almost analogue way. Matt commissioned illustrator and comic book artist Tasmin Naidoo to create a piece of art that reflected the feeling and intention behind the songs.
So tell us a bit about the new album and how it differs from your previous albums, both as a solo artist and as part of a band?
Matt: The new record marked a massive shift in songwriting and production for me, I love making my own records at home because every time you plug the gear in its a learning experience. I hope to put the record out on vinyl eventually so I made it a side A and side B kind of vibe. The first half is pure guitar driven music, very stripped down, and very close to what I’ve always done. So I called it “Songs found in the earth”. The second half, I used my keyboard as the main driving instrument instead of the guitar and all the melody lines were written on a keyboard, hence I called it “songs found in the machine”. Then I just went wild and started layering sounds on top of each other. I wanted to create massive electronic soundscapes that created atmosphere. It really is very, very introspective music, however, I want to present it live eventually one day. I just know nothing about live electronic music.
Even though you could call it electro in some way there are a lot of other acoustic instruments thrown in. My inspiration came very much from bands like New Order and The Cure and other New Wave 80’s type stuff, like the origins of using synths and guitars together. I also got really into the work of Felix Laband and I think that was also a big contributing factor for trying out new things. I also ran the keyboard through various big sounding guitar effects and distortions which gave me some surprisingly great results. Some people even asked “how did you get the guitar to sound so big” and I was like "It isn’t a guitar it's a keyboard going through distortion effects" etc. Sorry for rambling, I could talk about this for hours. However I also didn’t use any Pro Tools, computers or standard recording software to achieve this, but just my trusty, Boss BR-800. To get more channels I just kept bouncing down tracks and doing a line in recording of the bounced mastered wav files to create more channels on my desk as I’m limited to only 6 channels at a time. Its a very stubborn and old school way of doing things but I never got my head around computer recording software and never really wanted to. I think this approach really made something unique come out, I’m slowly working toward my own signature sound and I think this recording is a huge step up from a production perspective compared to the previous ones. It's still very much a digital recording but I’ve taken an almost analogue approach to doing it, hence the title of the record “Anatronic” which was coined by my buddy Yusuf Laher as I told him about the madness I was attempting, we laughed and it was a joke that stuck. I was also very fortunate to receive some excellent mastering from Alejandro Rojas Carranza at Angry Monkey Studios in Mexico City, which really gave the record a nice smooth finish.
Do you have a personal favorite track from it?
Matt: Not at all, I think the record stands as a nice collection of songs so it's hard to point out a favourite...
You did a launch tour of some pretty unconventional locations outside of the usual gig circuit.
How did it go and what spots would you recommend to other musicians / bands?
Matt: The tour was life-changing in so many ways. I deliberately said that I didn’t want to tour any big cities this time, so we hit some obscure places and got amazing responses at every town. It was a very special tour for me as I took a really long break from music before planning it and I really wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to pull it off. The album was a serious labour of love to get done and the tour seemed like a great reward for all the effort and a bit of respite from a tough year.
Mmm... not sure which towns to recommend as most touring musicians want to make a profit when they go out there on the road and this wasn’t that tour. However our biggest show was in Lesotho. It was so packed that the restaurant had to pull out more chairs and people were still standing at the back on top of that. Alliance Francaise de Maseru did a fantastic job of hosting us.
Also, Namibia is a magical place with some of the most untouched beauty I have ever witnessed. We played in a town called Aus famous for its wild horses. However, if you do tour Africa hire a 4x4 as we spent two days travelling through the desert in my tiny Renault kwid. The roads are so bad in Namibia that we had to go roughly 15 to 30 km for almost 700km to avoid any traumatic car damage, it took us almost a full 48 hours, we lost our marbles a bit, but the experience of being in the desert with no one around for two days is priceless and somewhat spiritual, a real connection to nature, which is the heritage of Africa.
Swakopmund was also a great city to play and we met some awesome people, Rainer from Nautilus Studios is a kind-hearted gentleman who put us in touch with The Royal Bull which was probably our second busiest show of the tour. The owner Marcelle is also an awesome guy. Everyone on this trip was so supportive and great we even had an extremely memorable show in Port Nolloth of all places, a diamond fishing town on the west coast of South Africa.
There are so many people to thank, it's scary. It was probably my favourite tour so far and I’ve been on many.
You have talked a little bit online about being diagnosed with "surfer's ear"- how has it changed things for you and what advice would you give to other musicians who are dealing with a similar condition?
Matt: Yeah, roughly a year ago my hearing got really bad. I went to various specialists and none of them really seemed to know what to do, until I found Sean Overall from Wholesale Hearing. This guy is a maverick and a saint in my eyes. He is a scientist that builds his own hearing aids and ear protection for a fraction of a price of the others on the market. He assured me that my issues with hearing loss weren’t just related to noise, and that surfing was a contributing factor. From the age of about 8, there hasn’t really been a week of my life that I haven’t been in the ocean, but I had various other things going wrong from Eustachian Tube Dysfunction, Hyperacusis, Surfers Ear and Tinnitus. I’m usually not so candid about my private affairs but if I can impart what I've been through and it can help others that’s fantastic and that’s how we make a difference. Obviously, the noise didn’t help and close to 20 years of playing in loud punk bands had just taken its toll.
I had already started making Anatronic but by halfway through the recording process things just all seemed to be going wrong. I stopped going out, gave up a lot of different things including surfing and became extremely reclusive. Even the sound of birds outside became painful to hear and my life seemed to be a series of panic attacks, in between trying to get through long days in an extremely noisy office. I even wore ear protection sometimes at work! With the help of Sean, I went on a programme to try and clear the fluids trapped inside my Eustachian Tubes and I rested.
Whenever I felt the urge, I’d put down a chord or a line for the new record sometimes at the price of a setback in my recovery, however, I had to finish it come hell or high water. Finishing Anatronic became my motivation for getting better.
I urge anyone who is having hearing issues to see someone as soon as the problem arises. I noticed a sensitivity in my ears years ago but ignored it until it was too late. I’d also urge musicians to use ear protection, but ear protection that works for your ears, as our ears are all different shapes and sizes. Get custom airtight ones and work with the acoustician or audiologist making them until you get a perfect fit. Also, I hope to make it trendy to wear earplugs. It's amazing the strange kind of stigma that is still associated with it, people in the venues mock you and say, "Why are you wearing those?" etc. I also think it would be great if venues came to the party to put warnings at the door and they could even take it further and give out inexpensive hearing protection on arrival. Also, engineers should all be forced to use decibel readers and often it's just unnecessarily loud to the point where it doesn’t even sound like music anymore, the engineers themselves are predominately deaf but that still doesn’t give them the right to make others deaf. Over the last year, my hearing has improved dramatically, I’m still not 100% right and quite frankly I don’t think I ever will be. I have my bad and good days with it, but to look how far I have come in a year is amazing. All I can hope is that next year things will improve further. I’m currently looking into my first set of in-ear monitors and I’d urge any serious musician to do the same. Hearing loss, hyperacusis and tinnitus is no joke, it's crippling and the worst part is no one sees or hears your suffering. Hearing loss is also related to anxiety and depression so a lot else can start going wrong when you start losing your hearing. However a South African just invented the first inner ear transplant which is great news and brings a lot of hope to people who are going deaf or who are experiencing one of the many related illnesses associated with hearing loss.
What's the word on the follow-up album?
Matt: Yeah, I actually have finished the follow up to Anatronic. I came back from tour started tracking and just carried on. I had a Forest Gump moment and just kept running hahahah. I figured while I can, I must make as much music as possible. I have to credit it to a tiny yellow keyboard that was gathering dust at the old smelly orange studio, where we used to rehearse with Sibling Rivalry until Steve, our drummer and owner of the studio, opened his New Noise facility. The little Casio tone bank had so many awesome sounds I couldn’t resist and this album goes even deeper into the “Anatronic” sound. The record is currently being mastered by Neil Snyman (worked with Lady Smith Black Mambazo, Madala Kunene etc) and I think its the biggest sounding album I’ve ever made, I’m keen for everyone to hear it. I’m hoping it will be out soon and I should also be on tour again soon, so find me online to find out where and when.
And a huge thanks to Shaun and Conley and the We Did This crew for always supporting what I do and who I am, love you to the moon and back... x
Questions by: Shaun Richards
Stream or download Anatronic ↓
Follow up single Recorded at Sad Room Studios, engineered, mixed, mastered and produced by Matt Vend. All lyrics and words by Matt Vend ↓
Visit:
www.mattvend.com
https://www.facebook.com/mattvend031
https://twitter.com/matt_vend
https://www.instagram.com/mattvend031/
Tasmin's (cover art artist) Instagram page below:
https://www.instagram.com/tazbedevilled/
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