Kaho Matsui didn’t record and release music until three years ago, but the Portland artist’s discography is already huge. Her Bandcamp page has an average of 1 release per month she’s fielding everything from ambient her music based on her recordings to dizzying drums raves her music programming. Her range of styles is staggering.
You’ll be forgiven for looking at this prolific work as a way to make up for lost time.
“I think it’s the journaling situation,” says Matsui. “The album doesn’t take him more than a week because we want it to be like what’s happening now.”
In this dense cloud of albums, EPs, singles, collaborations and one-offs, her new album, no more losses, stands out. This is her first release of 2023, chronicling her robust 45 minutes and chock-full of collaborations with other musicians in her circle of friends and beyond.
While guest density may seem like a way to establish no more losses It’s a big-event release and stands on top of short, tongue-in-cheek projects that rub elbows on Bandcamp, so there’s a reason for Matsui’s diary-like style and collaborative approach.
“We’re trying to get out of Portland by the end of the summer,” says Matsui. “Then I think about whether something happened to me when I moved and I miss it. ”
So the idea was to make a record with friends. In “Come and See” the artist Kevlar his wedding his dress, snarehead and Wyatt his Murphy. Both are roommates of Matsui’s girlfriends.
“They are all great musicians,” says Matsui. “If I move out at the end of the year and I haven’t recorded music with them yet, I’m in a situation where I have to record music from time to time and we’re all blank on that. So the core. I guess you wanted to create a memory.”
Among the album’s nine credited features, the name most people familiar with the world of experimental music will recognize is the Austin-based artist, who uses an eclectic catalog and violin to create one It is the name of More Eaze, also known as Mari Maurice Rubio, who is known for creating one. – an orchestra of people, as she does loss“I want to leave now”
“I longed [Mari] After all these years, it’s kind of surreal for her to say, ‘Oh, I listened to your music, that’s amazing,'” Matsui says. And she says, “We should work together.” ”
More Eaze’s music is positioned as “emo-ambient”, a style of rock music that emphasizes emotional expression. Matsui also felt a sense of familiarity with those words. Matsui has stated that her music is “emo in the way it presents ideas rather than directly referencing emo music”, but her playing on guitar is more like her football-like middle school. Western emo influenced by the runny style pioneered by her band.
But listening to Matsui’s music is about engaging with almost everything she’s heard in her 26 years on earth. Matsui was born into a musical family in Japan. Her mother is a piano teacher and her brother is a “genius” with a degree in jazz studies. Growing up, she enjoyed her music of metal and electronic dance. Both still influence her work today.
“Something like metal and EDM is very clear and definite: ‘It grows here, it falls here,'” she explains. “I love it, it’s one of my favorite things. I love a drop.”
When he was in elementary school, the Matsui family moved to San Jose. When she turned 18, she moved to Portland and left her legacy behind. I sat down.
“I made a lot of money working at a hospital, so I thought, oh, this is great, I should be really happy with my life,” says Matsui. “And I was doing really bad.”
Matsui’s early days in Portland were a routine of gigging, working long hours, and traveling between Oregon and the Bay Area. “I had no friends, nothing but work,” she said. She quit her job around the same time that her group of friends in the Bay Area came to a rave and stayed at her house.
“We talked a lot about making music. A lot of people who stayed at my house were in bands or doing recording projects,” she says.
Some of these friends were members of the label Norm Corps. S/Ta tribute to Norm Corps co-founder Paris Alexander, aka Golden Boy, who passed away in 2021 and enjoyed the sort of uptempo, polyrhythmic rave music that makes up the bulk of the album.
With the support of friends and enough time to make music, Matsui had this revelation. Here’s what I want to do. She’s still doing it, and by the time you read this she’ll probably have two more albums out.
“I want people listening to my music to understand that this is all happening,” says Matsui. “If you don’t release music for two months, nothing will happen.”