The Whitney Johnson :: Matchess Interview
When did you first begin to fall in love with music and was this something that was relevant around your household growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences? You’ve participated in groups and projects over the years, like Cancer House, Winged Wheel and E+, to name a few. Tell me about some of the outfits and times spent with them, while this would eventually lead into your solo career debut in 2015, entitled “Somnaphoria” on Trouble in Mind.
I grew up in rural Pennsylvania until I was 6 years old. When I went back to visit my friend Lindsey, she asked if I was still making up songs. I started taking piano lessons on a Duophonic Yamaha keyboard. Once I learned to play more than two notes at a time, I had to give up those lessons. Gladly, my school had a string orchestra, so I started playing the viola at age 9. In my early life, I was influenced by the sounds of nature, such as the crick that ran by my house, animal sounds and the wind. I was just revisiting E+. We only released one tape, and my copy has suffered the wear of years. Now it cuts to mono every so often. Cancer House and Winged Wheel are two current groups. I love to collaborate, and each project brings out a different side of me as a musician. The first Matchess recording was a self-released tape in 2012, but my first proper release was the cassette "Seraphastra" on Digitalis in 2013. At the time, I relished the opportunity to bring all my different sides into one project. Now, I feel the drive to pull apart those sides into different projects once again.
What was the process of writing and recording this record as well as making the connection with the TIM folks, who you would go on to release other titles such as “Sacracorpa”, “Huizkol” in the past? What are some of your fondest memories of bringing these albums to life, and how much has changed over the last half decade leading up to your Drag City debut in 2022 with “Sonescent”?
Trouble in Mind released "Seraphastra" on vinyl in 2014, and then I continued to release the trilogy of “Somnaphoria” and “Sacracorpa” with them. There's a really cool cassette box set with artwork by Sarah Drake. I met Bill Roe first when he was working at Permanent Records in Chicago and was thrilled when they wanted to put out that first record. My recording process was quite arcane, I suppose. I would make recordings on tapes and then dump them onto digital. Then, I used a small Tascam digital 8-track. I didn't start using a DAW until a bit later. I have played on several Drag City releases over the years, so it was a real honor to release "Sonescent" on their label.
Jumping ahead to your most recent and very exciting duo album-follow ups, “Hav” (WJ) and “Stena” (M), which come out this fall on DCR. Such a huge body of work both in volume and atmosphere. Very curious to know your particular process of constructing as well as conjuring the elements you needed to make these albums back to back, if not simultaneously. Is there anything else you would like to share further with the readers?
These two albums come from different artists, and they were made concurrently. "Stena" began as a field recording project in Cyprus and Greece in 2021, following the archeological path of the cult of Hermaphroditus. I wrote and recorded some songs on tour in 2022 and in Miller Beach, Indiana that fall. The rest came together through the editing and mixing process. "Hav" was inspired by the discovery of a marimba. Someone gave it to neighbors of my friends, my friends, Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse. They inherited it when that neighbor moved away. We share a practice space, and I became obsessed with the combination of wooden keys and metal resonators. The sine wave array was composed in Max/MSP at a residency at Inkonst in Malmö, Sweden and with the Halldorophone at EMS in Stockholm. The only other sounds on that record are the viola and a sequenced ARP Odyssey synthesizer.
