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On Genre

People get so caught up in genre. The sounds you use to make a song are important, but I’m more interested in the rock bottom guts of what makes a good song.

That being said, I’m looking to bring my singing to a genre that sadly lacks that “good song” mentality. As a singer who grew up loving electronically produced music, I believe I have the unique opportunity to bring the amazing capabilities of modern live electronics to an audience hungry for something different.

On Marketability. I am a thinking creature who understands the needs of a market economy. That being said, this is music, people. It’s important to listen to opinions and know your audience, but you also need to listen to your heart and what you are called to do in this life.

Listen. The self-awareness of art in the Information Age is called postmodernism. Modernism set up rules that purposefully constructed basically awful sounding music. That didn’t last, but what did last was the idea of rules in art. It causes a hell of an identity crisis when a creative person looks at their output and goes, “I’m not an artist, I’m just following the rules of genre!”

Around the advent of the boy band, that was when they figured out the rules for pop music. Now the genre is just a highly profitable joke geared toward children who don’t know any better quite yet.

I’d rather be relevant than rich.

On Collaborating. “But Paul, you’re an electronic musician! Isn’t that punk rock DIY mentality your greatest asset?”

No.

We all used to be bedroom producers. Every last solitary one of us. That was because only we knew where music would be in ten years. We worked alone because we had to.

But that’s changing. Weird noises don’t fall so strangely on the public ear anymore. Everyone is out there making music on a laptop.

Until about a year ago I was obsessed with the credit, Everything by Paul Matthis. I finally started writing songs with other people in mind, the results of which you can listen to at the top of this page. My music immediately, to put it simply, got better.

Punk means do it yourself, but that used to mean do it by yourself along with your band. This is important. You make better music with others. That’s the way it is.

On Performing. I’ll tell ya, I’ve been to a lot of shows. A lot. And no one goes to a lounge club and says, “Man, that rocked.” More like, rocked them to sleep. Oh! Zing!

Electronic music doesn’t have to sound like that. You can get real energetic with this stuff, and a good vocal performance draws anyone in. AND, it doesn’t even have to be all electronic! You just need to be big. BIG. It’s almost 2010. When I go to a show, I want it to sound like it’s frigging almost 2010.

The acts are out there. Jamie Lidell, Muse, Radiohead, even Kanye West! All wonderful, loud, forward-thinking music with a strong performance up front. We’ve got all these tools. Let’s use them.