I’ve been chatting backwards and forwards with Matty for a while, about the writing process, playing in bands and singing. You may know him from ‘IO’, a great punky alternative outfit we share the Monomyth room with. Matty was kind enough to show me his back catalog of tunes he's been doing for himself. One stood out as a 90s inspired slower pick, reminding me of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, two big bands for me in my younger days (I’m all about nostalgia as you know).

Matty pull’s Flat Moon’s maestro drummer, @sam._jones, out of the neighbouring room to lay down the 90s style rock drums. Golden snare, golden performance - even had a hi hat that said ‘Lo-fi’ on it! The perfect occasion to use it. Those snare hits are perfection, big thank you to Sam. Then it was just me and Matty. Bass came first and here’s where our two different approaches became clear. His absolute wonder-unit of a multi-effects pedal, emulating amps, pedals, the lot. An impressive unit which he got, like, half off. What a beast!

The tones were all stunning, we got three guitar tones on there, all huge sounding, routed straight into the 4-track. Not usually my approach, especially not for guitars, but it was a great opportunity to try it and see what we thought. I think it's pretty similar to the proper version he did because of this reason. The distorted guitar in the last section absolutely rips. 

After aiming a little closer to perfection than i usually do, we decided to leave the third channel open and maybe come back and revisit with vocals another day (That day never came, we left it as it was).

We come from two different approaches, me and Matty. He’s a producer - his aim is to get the best sound and performance possible (Makes perfect sense). For me, perfection is a misnomer. That’s why I love to record with people like Matty, I think we both get a lot out of pulling each other in our own directions, to learn new things and improve as people making music.

For Fans of: Pearl Jam, Porcupine Tree and Northlane.