Evans, Matt: Soft Science CS

Matt Evans is a percussionist, composer, and experimentalist in Brooklyn, NY. Zoning his latest record, “Soft Science” is like reading through a biology textbook as if it were a collection of poetry and watching the letters slowly re-arrange until it reads more like science fiction. The album is a “mostly-not-chill” collection of brightly-hued maximalist miniatures, combining squiggly free drumming and alien synthesizers. The album sews together equal parts millennial iconography (mushrooms / house plants / anime) and retro-futurist sci-fi (Sam Delaney, THX 1138, Ursula Le Guin) in an expression of waning utopic yearning. The sound varies widely, from the breathing synth intro of ‘Saprotrophia’ to the lush breezes of 'Alocasia' and crunchy chaos of ‘Scump’ featuring (respectively) like-minded off-world sonic travelers David Lackner and Ka Baird. Led from the drum kit, these “Jambient Zone Poems” are a frenetic post-lockdown response to the “chill complexity” of his first solo record “New Topographics” and unites obsessions with composers like Iannis Xenakis and Louis Andriessen with the expressive solo percussion performances of Milford Graves and Midori Takada, backed by a symphony of casio keyboards. The final result is stunning, an album of boundless creativity and free-spirited exploration, honing in on a sonic solar system from his own distinct galaxy.