Matt Evans has a new video for “Spinning Blossoms” off his New Topographics LP due out April 17th via Whatever’s Clever. The Brooklyn-based percussionist/composer often works in a cross-disciplinary context, and he has performed and recorded with projects including Tigue, Bearthoven, Man Forever, and Private Elevators as well as performing and recording his own solo material.
New Topographics was written and recorded in December of 2018 during a month-long artist residency program at the Brooklyn art space Pioneer Works. Inspired by Timothy Morton‘s notion of the “hyperobject”-‘objects’ such as climate change, the internet, or styrofoam that are so distributed in time/space as to transcend localization, Evans found an analog of this sentiment in the Richard Brautigan poem “All watched over by machines of loving grace.”
Using the poem as his basis, Evans recorded his physical reenactment of it through various communication mediums such as braille, writing, typing, morse code, and radioteletype. In response, those were then layered with live percussion and ambient tracks. He explains:
“Making this music was a way to practice understanding what I leave behind. We put up walls to function, but if we make a habit of taking them down and really looking and listening to what’s happening around us, we will have greater empathy for the people and beings we share space with. Our ability to empathize with the earth itself will grow.”
The video for “Spinning Blossoms” was created by Soop Groop, a group that includes Matt Evans as well as the artists Vanessa Castro, Dara Hirsch, and Melodie Stancato. Evans is featured on drums while Stancato can be seen creatively moving through office corridors and warehouse aisles. In the video description we are told:
“Mel and Matt aren’t necessarily two different characters, but two sides of the same coin. Their performances have an in-the-moment energy that can be found falling in and out of rhythm with the mundane and in search for an escape of imagination. Their movements align at times and their universes finally feel in sync. Perhaps all other moments are and aren’t in sync as well.”
