Matthew Jonson

[mpc]

Considering my theorem on canada being the new shoreditch, I knew the whole Matthew Jonson saga was too good to be true. If you've not been dead, I'm sure you'll have witnessed literally every music journalist and enthusiast wanking over the "Canadian Techno Wonderboy". If you've been anywhere near Phonica records within the last year, I'm sure you'll have had a handful of matthew jonson 12"s forced upon you. With everyone from Ricardo Villalobos to Richie Hawtin wanting to have his babies, it appeared as though Matthew Jonson was actually God.

Well, I'm sorry to have to crush everyone's dreams, but Matthew Jonson is, in fact, none other than Satan himself, Fergie.

The news was released yesterday on the eve of Jonson's, or should that be, Fergie's new release on Kompakt.

Fergie, possibly the most uncool person alive, obviously wanted to hide his identity, so he came up with another guise to release under. In a press release yesterday, he revelaed how his new alias came about: "I was having it large style at Sankey's last year and while I was off my nut, I thought maybe it would be good to release bangin' tunes under someone else's name, so I combined the names of Matthew Dear and Adam Johnson. And that was it. Sorted. The whole Canadian thing was just to throw mixmag off the scent."

The picture below proves it:

 

[Tactics]

Lmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..................................................................................................................................................................

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[mpc]

in other news:

 

[xero]

presumed this was an april fool mpc, but it seems the organisers of sonar are in on it: http://www.sonar.es/2005/eng/conciertos.cfm - both fergie & jonson on the bill, I presume that they won't be appearing at the same time??!!

 

[mms]

i don't understand kompakt at all, there are one or two good records but most of it sounds like plastic eurotrance off of german hotel room telly circa 1994. why are they so popular, even seemingly right minded people fawn over them?
playhouse and perlon, those labels seem to have stronger releases.
can someone explain or even set prove me wrong?

 

[ambrose]

i think your mystifcation lies in not explaining why "plastic eurotrance off of german hotel room telly circa 1994" is a bad thing!

i dont really buy releases of the main kompakt label, but the speicher series for me provides consistently excellent tunes, by turns banging, extraordinary (hello brutalga square), and overall just fucking good dance music.

KOmapkt themselves seem to have a pretty wide remit for kompakt releases but that part of the label is where they can indulge their pop and trance sensibilities. I think if anything the love for kompakt is necessarily just to do wit hthe releases on komapkt, but the concept as a whole, the whole distribution system, the aesthetic, the confidence, the organisation. i use komapkt as a shorthand to describe the wholoe nexus of mainly german, us, french or otherwise house and techno which has provided me wit hthe most blissful and wonderful moments on dancefloors, in my car or at home (like last night listening to pkerflat 4), even if grime leaves me feeling more excited as a scene.

so i think kompakt gets a disproportiante amount of coverage/mentions, simply becasue its the easiest reference point for the scene.

mtthew jonson however, im cooling on rapidly. im still excited to hear the new speicher with him on it though. anyone heard it?

 

[simon silverdollar]

i think one of the main reasons why people love kompakt, and certainly why I love the label, is that they often do very romantic, emotional techno, and that can be hard to find.

mathew jonson's nice, i like him, but sometimes it's a bit too glacial for my liking- very pretty, but no effect on the heart strings.

 

[mpc]

presumed this was an april fool mpc, but it seems the organisers of sonar are in on it: http://www.sonar.es/2005/eng/conciertos.cfm - both fergie & jonson on the bill, I presume that they won't be appearing at the same time??!!

i'm betting 50 pence that 'jonson' performs in a mask (and cape).

I HATE KOMPAKT!

steve bug is ok, but he doesnt really have many variations on his style.

michael mayer uses some ridiculously cheesy samples.

the speicher 12"s vary from complete shit on both sides to 1 good side and 1 horrible boshing/minimal boring side.

the new matthew jonson 12" on kompakt is very dull.

i like about 3 of jonson's records. i own all 3. the other 6 or 7 he's released are dull variations on his better tracks.

i'm a big fan of enchanting minimal techno, but i don't think kompakt provide too much of this.

 

[mms]

i'm betting 50 pence that 'jonson' performs in a mask (and cape).




steve bug is ok, but he doesnt really have many variations on his style.

michael mayer uses some ridiculously cheesy samples.

the speicher 12"s vary from complete shit on both sides to 1 good side and 1 horrible boshing/minimal boring side.

the new matthew jonson 12" on kompakt is very dull.

i like about 3 of jonson's records. i own all 3. the other 6 or 7 he's released are dull variations on his better tracks.

i'm a big fan of enchanting minimal techno, but i don't think kompakt provide too much of this.

yeah there is some great stuff around but for some reason kompakt seems to be the default label of choice even tho it doesn't seem to be too hot, maybe some people are a bit lazy i dunno.
i tell you mate, one side of this record called moves by cobblestone jazz i heard is really hot, big actual strings over building carl craig like precussion.

 

[mpc]

cobblestone jazz is Mathew Jonson’s 3-piece jazz ensemble. the new 12" is definitely on a carl craig tip.

 

[simon silverdollar]

yeah there is some great stuff around but for some reason kompakt seems to be the default label of choice even tho it doesn't seem to be too hot, maybe some people are a bit lazy i dunno.
i tell you mate, one side of this record called moves by cobblestone jazz i heard is really hot, big actual strings over building carl craig like precussion.

i don't like a lot of stuff on kompakt, but i think it's still the best techno label i know of. kompakt's ratio of good to not-so-good may not be even near perfect, but it's better than just about anyone else's e.g trapez, perlon, playhouse, traum, areal, ghostly. [not that i'm saying that there isn't some amazing stuff on these labels].

er, so i'm now in the position of saying that kompakt is the 'least bad', which isn't really where i wanted to end up! cuz i really do LOVE some of their stuff...

 

[jack]

mpc, just to make us clear on this, what are the three good mathew jonson records?

 

[mpc]

Behind the Mirror/Folding Space 12" [Substatic]

Decompression [minus]

Followed By Angels [It is What It Is]

 

[simon silverdollar]

Behind the Mirror/Folding Space 12" [Substatic]


Decompression [minus]

Followed By Angels [It is What It Is]

you don't like typerope? i thought everyone did?

 

[jack]

Typerope is actually my fave. Its the least dry of all his tunes; even 'followed by angels' can get a little irritating.

 

[mpc]

i've heard typerope so much that i can't buy it, although i do kinda like it.

damn i've contradicted myself!

i also kind of like a few other bits by him but don't tell anyone cos he's still overrated

 

[bassnation]

i think your mystifcation lies in not explaining why "plastic eurotrance off of german hotel room telly circa 1994" is a bad thing!

i went to a kompact beach party at last years sonar and they were playing cheesy trance nonsense. i think people would have drifted away if it hadn't have been a beach party and after 3 days of partying, were pretty fucked. was suprised though, i thought the label was better than that.

i dont really buy releases of the main kompakt label, but the speicher series for me provides consistently excellent tunes, by turns banging, extraordinary (hello brutalga square), and overall just fucking good dance music.

yeah, got the brutalga square tune - has to be heard in the right situation (4am, in a sweaty basement) for you to feel its full power.

mtthew jonson however, im cooling on rapidly. im still excited to hear the new speicher with him on it though. anyone heard it?

not into anything hes done since decompression to be honest. i get very bored of just listening to house and techno after a while, no matter how well produced it is.

 

[jack]

yeah, got the brutalga square tune - has to be heard in the right situation (4am, in a sweaty basement) for you to feel its full power.

have you (or anyone) heard brutalga square in this situation? If so, where, when, and can i come next time?

 

[3underscore]

Jonson is vastly overrated. By virtue of the Speicher series I now own my first track by him - I have seen anything in the previous 12"s, other than an awful lot of hype. My completist ways with Speicher aside, I still wouldn't.

The whole Kompakt thing for me has revolved around the Speicher / Extra series. As to why Kompakt gets such plaudits? It comes from the very same for me - when #4 (Irre) and #6 (Quarks) landed they sounded like nothing else. It is quite easy now to question the reasons behind Kompakt getting its name, but these were monumentally big tunes.

I would agree that Perlon and Playhouse are a lot more reliable as buy-on-sight labels - Kompakt main is a very varied beast, and Kompakt pop an odd approach. So why the hype? Distribution has made kompakt records vastly easier to get hold of than Perlon, and Playhouse to a certain extent. Repressing to demand (exactly where can I get a replacement copy for my Quebec Whorehouse 12s that have been caned for an eternity?). Plus the sound is a lot more dominant - play out in a club, and you get ten times more queries of what Speicher tunes are than any Perlon, Playhouse, Music Risque, Mutek - Dumb Unit and even Trapez or Traum tunes. Not exactly the dynamics of an argument, but strangely a fact from experience. They are mostly big moment records, something which perlon hugely avoids in its micro workouts.

Further - Kompakt from this attracts purchases from the isolated buyers. The Total compilations see to this very much. Superlongevity's have never been a collection from the labels releases, so aren't directly comparable. The people who really buy micro will know to fill their socks with Perlon releases (other than Jabberjaw which I never quite understand, Perlon is pretty flawless), the whole operation of still no website, minimal publicity effort etc makes it hardly surprising.

I didn't expect this to turn into some philosophy of micro, but I guess it has!

 

[Tim F]

I have this idea that Mathew Jonson's popularity is partly due to the conversion of techno (in the more restrictive sense of the word) fans to the German house/microhouse sound over the last couple of years. Whenever I read clubbing threads a lot of people talk about all this stuff as a rather new phenomenon, and as a replacement of/reaction to the Swedish techno sound of a years back. Mathew Jonson's stuff strikes me as exactly what a techno fan would <i>want</i> out of minimal house (in the sense of it being quite different to the precise sound they were into previously but sharing a certain homology with their general mindset re dance music) - cool, machinic/futuristic, trippy, impeccably produced, blank but evocative.

A good way of measuring this is by comparing Jonson to James Holden, who shares a lot with him but differs to the extent that he is microhouse-from-prog rather than microhouse-from-techno.