Matter – Starchild album review

Matty Doyle, Melbourne’s Deep Progressive artist better known to us as Matter, is set and kicking up a wonder with his Beatport topper, No1. Progressive House ten track Starchild album offering on GMJ and Matter’s very own Meanwhile Horizons imprint this month.

I got a good listen and traversed through the entire long-playing breadth of his latest musical offering and if I were to sum it up it’s one of those transient album’s – one track follows another without any semblance of cohesion yet connects the dots in your mind, provocative and mellifluous just so, and then you know the layers and moulds are unravelling altogether as one. From the title track to the next stronger Chemical Therapy falling into Air Sand just after which Matter comes more into his own with So It Goes where I find the sounds that I have come to associate with him.

There’s a fascinating dip with We Will Fade that goes on to soar with one of my favourite’s in the album called Lost In Seasons which is by far a beautiful artistic expression of the musicality in his brain, something I would happily want to dive into and snatch for myself. It’s goosebump inducing fare.

The Search continues on with slightly more air and the undulating bass snaking around lofty synth lines. Followed on a trot by Sundial which harks out a blend of dystopian churning bass, reduced drum patterns and evocative dreamy vocal that stretches out of this world and back at ya and orchestral motifs and wraith like sinewy insides that easily tells you to get lost in.

Lucid Academy and curiously cool Pacha Mama finish off the back end to form a majestic two-part suite in the outro of the album, the former’s panoramic entrails trimmed down to an occasional flourish above the latter’s gurgling low-end that’s urgent and unsettling. Matter’s debut fills November with noir-tinged splendour that makes for a trip that’s hard to resist.


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About the Author

Priya is based out of Mumbai and is a DJ/Producer plus contributor to Decoded Magazine, plus hosts her own monthly radio shows in multiple music channels internationally.