Navigating a swirling, hallucinatory prism of sound, Isaac Matus casts listeners into a constantly-twisting auditory world in his new EP, "Dos Caminos."
Isaac Matus, a Bogota-born producer and composer currently residing in New York, has established himself as an accomplished electronic musician who has worked with the likes of Toto la Momposina, Monsieur Periné, Carlos Vives, El Cholo Valderrama, Javier Limon, Hank Shocklee, Nona Hendryx, and Nella Rojas, among many others. Now on the heels of his last EP, "Mutación," Matus builds on the fresh, latin-infused rhythms that drive his tracks forward.
Dos Caminos' opener, In Between, gently nudges the listener into an ever-evolving soundworld built on glitched-out clave rhythms. Matus describes his process as "electronic with subtle Latin American influences."
"I guess some people would qualify it as IDM," Matus explains in an interview with Neon Pajamas. "I've always tried to incorporate elements from folkloric music from around the world into my music (especially Latin and Colombian), but I'm also constantly trying to discover what's the best and most elegant way to do it. I think that really interesting things can happen when you combine the electronic world with the "earthy" sound of traditional music, but when it becomes very obvious it can lose its interesting element.
Lo Que Somos, a highly explosive piece, bookends the EP - the track is tightly produced, building layers of tension upon itself, gearing up to explode.
The track was conceived several months before "I started working on this EP around October, and to be honest, it was pretty much done by December, but I let it sit for a little bit and then got back to it around February, when I finished the last details with fresh ears," Matus explains in the same interview with Neon Pajamas.
"At first, it was two completely separate pieces ("In Between" and "Lo Que Somos"), but then I realized they worked well together so I decided to release both of them under the same "package". The interlude idea actually came during the mixing process and the conceptualization of the artwork. I felt like I was missing something to fully connect both tracks. "Dos Caminos" means "Two Paths" in Spanish, I though of the interlude as something that would connect those two paths, which is why it contains excerpts from both songs but somehow processed, stretched, etc."
The harmonic colors drawn from Uruguayan Jazz and Candombe, particularly in Lo Que Somos ("What We Are"), help colour the soundworld Matus crafts and distinguishes his work from other producers in the field.
Matus is staying busy, with several more singles on the horizon, both from him as an independent artist and as a producer/musician. He has firmly established himself as an artist to take note of and should be on the radar of anyone looking for breaking-edge EDM.
