Matt Evans: Soft Science
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About
Band leader, composer, and percussionist Matt Evans (member of Tigue) leads members of Wild Up in a new collaborative orchestration of his interplanetary studio compositions. A “mostly-not-chill” collection of brightly-hued “zone poems,” Soft Science bonds together alien synthesizers, squiggly free drumming, and improvisatory chamber-music scores into a compound that is equal parts millennial esoterica, retro-futurist science fiction, and waning utopic yearning.
Artists
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Matt Evans
Matt Evans is a drummer and producer making acoustic and electronic music about the poetic interconnections between landscapes: internal, external, fictional, and virtual. Taking cues from millennial esoterica, natural phenomena, and science fiction, Matt uses drum-driven hypnotic soundscapes and improvisatory performances to embody the imaginary ecosystems of surreal sonic worlds. In “New Topographics” (2020) and “Soft Science” (2022), vintage synth burbles, peculiar percussion skitters, and muddy foraged samples are enmeshed like critters in a sci-fi biome. Matt performs these tracks from the drum kit, with samplers and pedals, embodying the array of characters as a ritualistic representation of these futuristic landscapes. His approach creates a groovy psychedelic instrumental music that is “hyperreal and phantasmal” (Wire Magazine), “meticulous and expressive.” (New York Times), and “a form of chill complexity” (New York Times).
Matt has performed solo at acclaimed venues such as the Guggenheim, The Kitchen, and Roulette; held residencies at Antenna Cloud Farm, Pioneer Works, Exploring the Metropolis, and The Shell House; given talks at Wesleyan University and Dartmouth College; and released solo records with Whatever’s Clever and Moon Glyph (forthcoming). Matt has toured with projects Neti-Neti, Tigue, piano trio Bearthoven, Deerhoof, and others. He’s commissioned and performed music by composers Lea Bertucci, Steve Reich, Sarah Hennies, Michael Gordon, Scott Wollschleger, and others. Past festival appearances have included Le Guess Who? in Utrecht, Netherlands, Big Ears in Tennessee, US, and the Summer Nostros Festival in Athens, Greece. He’s toured throughout the United States and Europe, including shows in Latvia, Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, the UK, Iceland and the Netherlands. Matt has released records with NNA, New Amsterdam, Whatever’s Clever, Cantaloupe, Dethbomb Arc, Perfect Wave, Thrill Jockey, Dinzu Artefacts, and Moon Glyph.
About Endless Season
Art in LA has long been about freedom and a rich rejection of history. With intersecting methods and intentions, it is humble yet aspirational, creating a city that appeals to the aesthete and mystic in all its citizens. Here, famous artists also double as street-side sign painters, our finest restaurants are located in strip malls, and our landmarks are more geographical than architectural or fleetingly experiential rather than permanent monuments to their lineages. Here, our religious and secular musics sound the same.
Endless Season revolves around these distinct West Coast traits. These programs mark a new chapter, focusing on sustainability and place, and investing in the artists and audiences who make our city vibrant. Together, we encourage, question, reinterpret, and challenge the past, modality, and genre. We hold a space for intersectionality and dialogue surrounding every aspect of our work.
More about Endless SeasonEndless Season 2022-2023
Note: this is an archive of the first edition of Wild Up’s Endless Season
Wild Up in Los Angeles
For years we’ve been on the road, and now, at long last, we’re overjoyed to announce our Endless Season.
Art in LA has been about freedom and an abundant eschewing of history. With intersecting methods and intentions, humble, aspiring, a city appealing to the aesthete and the mystic in all of her citizens. Here famous artists are also street-side sign painters, our best restaurants drive or live in strip malls, our landmarks are geographical before architectural or fleetingly experiential instead of permanent monuments to their own lineages. Here our religious and secular musics sound the same.
We want our musical community to gather around all of these uniquely West Coast traits. Questioning and reinterpreting the past. Challenging modality. Living totally outside notions of the genre but existing in that outsider place drenched in a blazing pathos — a sect of the calm and humble, inquisitive builders of something gossamer unknown. We want to hit drums loudly. To improvise. To create monuments to chaos and ecstasy that shimmer in a room. We will use natural light reflected by mirrors. We will sit in contemplation, awash in wailing sound. We will hold a space of intersectionality and dialogue surrounding every aspect of our work. And we will do all of it together.
Get ready, LA we’re coming home!