mattmercer.com relaunched
I've had two sites registered under my name for years now, one for my design & work (matthewmercer.com) and one for my music (mattmercer.com).
Up until a few years ago, I semi-regularly updated my site with some free tracks and a schedule of live events (back when I would do regular laptop PA performances). That all trailed off in 2005 or so, and then I just took the site down completely when I migrated ISPs in late 05/early 06.
I decided to revive the domain, having just worked with my buddy John to pull together the newly relaunched Microfilm site. I re-used the template, changing the look and feel and overall intent of the site a little. Microfilm's site is about introducing our music to the world and encouraging people to support us by buying our releases legitimately. mattmercer.com does that as well, but it's mostly about a visual tone with a running archive of tracks that goes pretty far back.
My official releases (two 12" records for Forte and Neutonmusic, as well as a couple mini-albums on my own via Tunecore/iTunes/Amazon) leaned heavily on cut-up samples and angular dance music, but I've always been somewhat of a tinkerer. I had just gone through loads of archival tapes this summer and ripped a bunch of session recordings to my computer, edited them into tracks and wanted to post them somewhere. I've included a good chunk of them here (some I either deemed not up to snuff or just tried to at least vaguely edit a bit), and the sound varies significantly, all while remaining electronic and instrumental. I'll let you peruse them at your leisure, but here is a rough guide to the disparate sounds you'll hear, and a loose frame of reference depending on your particular taste.
The top-heavy part of the playlist is the most recent, "official" material that is more slick, dancefloor compatible for the most part. The two Secrets 12" records are sprinkled in the middle along with compilation tracks I did for Ware and SubVariant (in addition to the tracks I contributed to now-defunct 409's comps under the alias Systm), and pretty much everything else is previously unreleased. There are tracks that are straight up house ("Where Did I Go Wrong?"), italo-disco ("Beautiful," "Preacher"), melodic IDM ("Walking Down a Side Street," "Fine Cutlery," "Honey Drizzle," "Dot Dash Dot," "Fairweather"), deep atmospheric techno ("Unassisted Living," "Wormhole", "Liquid"), slow ambience ("Scape," "Simmer & Shimmer"), gloomy soundtracks ("November," "Orange Skies," "Barely There") and some assorted oddities ("Seele" was total machine error music, for instance). I have a strong affinity to these early unreleased so-called "Vault Tracks" because many are from a totally different period of my life, and they were also all created entirely on a few hardware devices, no computer involved -- most tracks from 1999-2001.
It's all a bit self-indulgent, I know... but I wanted to share this living archive. I'll likely be expanding it as I begin to record new music under my own name, which I am planning to resume this winter. I may roll out some download functionality eventually, but for now it's streaming-only. However, the quality is quite good, so hopefully you enjoy some of it.
Click here to visit mattmercer.com
Up until a few years ago, I semi-regularly updated my site with some free tracks and a schedule of live events (back when I would do regular laptop PA performances). That all trailed off in 2005 or so, and then I just took the site down completely when I migrated ISPs in late 05/early 06.
I decided to revive the domain, having just worked with my buddy John to pull together the newly relaunched Microfilm site. I re-used the template, changing the look and feel and overall intent of the site a little. Microfilm's site is about introducing our music to the world and encouraging people to support us by buying our releases legitimately. mattmercer.com does that as well, but it's mostly about a visual tone with a running archive of tracks that goes pretty far back.
My official releases (two 12" records for Forte and Neutonmusic, as well as a couple mini-albums on my own via Tunecore/iTunes/Amazon) leaned heavily on cut-up samples and angular dance music, but I've always been somewhat of a tinkerer. I had just gone through loads of archival tapes this summer and ripped a bunch of session recordings to my computer, edited them into tracks and wanted to post them somewhere. I've included a good chunk of them here (some I either deemed not up to snuff or just tried to at least vaguely edit a bit), and the sound varies significantly, all while remaining electronic and instrumental. I'll let you peruse them at your leisure, but here is a rough guide to the disparate sounds you'll hear, and a loose frame of reference depending on your particular taste.
The top-heavy part of the playlist is the most recent, "official" material that is more slick, dancefloor compatible for the most part. The two Secrets 12" records are sprinkled in the middle along with compilation tracks I did for Ware and SubVariant (in addition to the tracks I contributed to now-defunct 409's comps under the alias Systm), and pretty much everything else is previously unreleased. There are tracks that are straight up house ("Where Did I Go Wrong?"), italo-disco ("Beautiful," "Preacher"), melodic IDM ("Walking Down a Side Street," "Fine Cutlery," "Honey Drizzle," "Dot Dash Dot," "Fairweather"), deep atmospheric techno ("Unassisted Living," "Wormhole", "Liquid"), slow ambience ("Scape," "Simmer & Shimmer"), gloomy soundtracks ("November," "Orange Skies," "Barely There") and some assorted oddities ("Seele" was total machine error music, for instance). I have a strong affinity to these early unreleased so-called "Vault Tracks" because many are from a totally different period of my life, and they were also all created entirely on a few hardware devices, no computer involved -- most tracks from 1999-2001.
It's all a bit self-indulgent, I know... but I wanted to share this living archive. I'll likely be expanding it as I begin to record new music under my own name, which I am planning to resume this winter. I may roll out some download functionality eventually, but for now it's streaming-only. However, the quality is quite good, so hopefully you enjoy some of it.
Click here to visit mattmercer.com