matphilly defies expectations with his debut album, i may be through with the past, but the past is not through with me — out now on Nightenjin.
An extraordinary display of passion, personality and storytelling, this album offers an unfiltered glimpse into the person behind the music, Mathew Phillips. This massive talent has played in various bands and experimented with all kinds of styles, and his culmination of vast musical influences shines throughout.
Many artists strive to be someone else when they release music or step onto a stage. But, it takes a special type of bravery to be your authentic self, which matphilly demonstrates here. His highs, lows, hardships and prosperities have all contributed to this concept album in the most personal sense.
If your ears crave something different and wholehearted, throw any preconceived notions about EDM out the window and put this genre-defying album on blast.
Listen below and scroll down to hear from matphilly himself!
matphilly – i may be through with the past, but the past is not through with me
Stream/download: music.nightenjin.com/link/nmgatu
What does your new album — i may be through with the past, but the past is not through with me — represent?
This is my own version of a concept album. It takes you on a journey to right before i hit my absolute rock bottom fighting my personal demons such as my issues with addiction. anxiety, depression, bi polar, Tourette’s, suicidal thoughts and the death of my friend and my girlfriend, who was murdered back when i was on tour with one of my bands. Then it goes into a brighter light as i started to fix my addiction and problems and make things better. Sadly through doing all of that, i lost my brother in July and he ended up being apart of the album in the middle. It was a shitty bump but i was in such a better mindset to deal with it.
The album sounds incredibly personal, which you expand on in this breakdown… Has it been therapeutic translating past experiences into music?
It’s definitely something that has helped me feel like i am getting some of the weight off my shoulders. I am the king of holding everything and never opening up because growing up i was in a family that said if i did that i was showing weakness so I’ve been programmed like this. But music had always been the best way to express yourself and let people know more about you and what you’re going through and see if anyone can relate so it was nice that i was able to be real vulnerable and true to myself and just do it and not care if people didn’t like that i opened up so much. In the end, the weight off my shoulders is a lot less and now i can focus on fixing other things in my life i messed up and hopefully mend friendships or at the least just say my peace and say i at least tried to fix my mistakes. It’s been quite the process but I’m not on step 9 of my NA steps so i have time haha.
How does it feel releasing such personal moments into the world?
I really was worried about it because I’m really putting myself out there to a world that sometimes i feel can care less. I feel like they just wanna hear the bangers and rage and i don’t blame them for it but hopefully they can see what i did and relate and enjoy. At the end of the day, you do what fees true to yourself and hopefully people will see that and enjoy it. I still love to make the hard and heavy tracks but one thing about always putting out singles and ep’s is you barely get a chance to have songs that just change the tone and this was something very important i wanted on the album. This is why i wish we could stick to a more longer ep or full length and is as artists can release full lengths because i think they tell better stories than EPs or singles.
With a sound so diverse and unpredictable, what are some of your influences and inspirations?
Oh man, haha. I listen to everything. I made a playlist of what inspired the lp and its full of crazy stuff like deafhaven, Deftones, cursive, minus the bear, Russian circles, between the buried and me and then dance music stuff like prodigy, the postal service, skrillex, must die!, virtual riot and so on. I’m really into any type of music that inspires me to write and that comes from anything. The song dessbo was written by the inspiration of mega man music, the year summer ended in june was inspired by my friend who makes ambient rock stuff like isis, “…Spaceyacht” and it’s reprise song “…academy la” we’re all based on just weird instrumental bands like this will destroy you, Godspeed! You back emperor. A lot of my heavy drops are always inspired off breakdown from metal and hardcore stuff. Add some inspiration from my favorite dance music producers and that’s me in a nutshell.
What do you hope people take away when listening to this album?
One thing i wanted to make sure that i did was add elements of instruments and make some stuff sound like it was a band arrangement. I come from the hardcore/metalcore/pop punk/emo scene so i was really lucky to get Vadim Taver (This Day Forward/A Life Once Lost/Poison The Well) and Aaron Marsh (Copeland/Glasswing) to help me make some great music that mixed electronica and a band. It was great working with them. At the end of the day i hope when they hear it they can let go of their problems and vent it all out and feel better about it. And if they have dealt with the same problems, come up to me at a show and say hi! I love to chat about it and hope to help you with any problems or questions you have. I don’t wanna sit here and say I’m good with answering everything cause of my anxiety but I’ll try! Also if you have a friend that might need to hear this, send it over to them! It’s important that we all collectively work together to fix these problems we have or else we will never get better. It’s a whole tough world out there but we’re still here so let’s enjoy it while we can.
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