Part 1
Name: Matt Hsu
Nationality: Taiwanese-Australian
Recommendations: I highly recommend any of Ursula K Leguin’s books, but I especially love the Earthsea series. It’s such a beautiful world to inhabit, and the subtle gender politics are so nicely threaded throughout, in Ali at the magic and journeying.
If you enjoyed this interview with Matt Hsu and would like to know more about his music and Matt Hsu's Obscure Orchestra, visit the group's official website. They are also on Instagram.
When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?
I’ve always been enamoured by naturally occurring sounds … ‘naturally occurring music’. Dry leaves crunching, air whipping through cave cracks, the echo of rain drops in cavernous environments, the rattle of seeds pod dangling from trees. The curiosity about sound has always been there.
The first songs I wrote were joke songs to make my sister laugh. I remember sitting on a balcony with my 9 year old sister during a summer storm, with a guitar I didn’t know how to play, and just singing nonsense and laughing against the thunder.
My biggest moment that completely derailed (in the best way possible) my generic office job path was stumbling across a flyer to join a folk-punk band called The Mouldy Lovers, one day in my 20s. Suddenly everything came together, music making and deep kinship, and the wider community of artists I got to meet. It became so clear that doing this, music plus community was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I completely reconsidered music making from this scary ‘undertaking’ to just playful DIY experimentation.
In the following years I ‘sucked the marrow of life’ as some author said, I travelled to New Orleans. On a jazz pilgrimage and fell in with the local crust punks, got to tour Japan and play with amazing bands, played with a Aboriginal desert rock band, and I started gathering as many instruments I could buy or borrow. By accident, I’d gotten everything I needed be a one-person orchestra, so that’s what I did!
My first tinkerings were simple ‘Play School’ sounding pieces using mbira, school recorder and cups of water. And in a nutshell, that’s how I came to be a punk-trained composer.
When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?
That’s amazing! I used to have these strange hallucinatory episodes where I felt like my whole being was infinitely expanding and shrinking simultaneously when I was about 8 or 9, and the only thing that would calm me was music from Hey Arnold, Rugrats or Power Rangers on TV. I think indirectly, I’ve always been enamoured with the emotional power of music. I also remember being intensely emotionally moved by Studio Ghibli music.
When I’m listening deeply, I imagine physical places and environments, or just feel an set of emotions really strongly. It absolutely changes the way I interact with the world - cooking or cleaning, for example, is so much better with, say, Mathieu Boogaerts or Chara playing.
How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?
My biggest breakthrough was moving past the idea that I had to sound like ‘something’, and realising I could sound like ‘anything’.
An indie band sounds like an indie band, because as much as we musicians like to rebuke the idea of “putting a label on music”, we sometimes do it to ourselves anyway, unconsciously or consciously. Whether it’s said out loud or not, we musicians at some point decide “let’s sound like X”.
But the thing about X is that it already exists, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to point to it and identify it (be it a genre, artist, decade, place or scene). And by choosing to sound like X, you build an expectation to respond to X benchmark, but also it’s creatively limiting because it set up these parameters of ‘this is what music’s meant to sound like’. So it was massively freeing to realise in music I could be anything and everything.
I should balance this by saying, choosing to sound like ‘something’ is also valid, that’s how culture and movements are built. New Orleans Second Line wouldn’t be a culture if only one person in history did it. It was just really eye opening to personally actively set aside music reference points and go back to that childhood obsession with “sounds”.
Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.
I’m a fairly happy-go-lucky person, I really relish simple things like bike rides, forest walks, lake swims, looking out of train windows, eating yum food, being free of bigotry and systemic oppression, and for the people around me to feel the same and be happy and laughing.
For a long time I tried to distance myself as much as I could from my own ‘Asian-ness’ as a way to deal with racism, because that’s the thing that made me a target from kids at school or randoms yelling out from cars (especially on “Australia Day”). I became that Asian kid who acted so white. I feel like a lot of kids deal with being made to feel different, by aligning themselves with the ‘winning’ side, and that was white culture, at the time.
At a certain point I started remembering how non-English-centric my music upbringing was, and after an adolescence of trying to ‘fit in’ via white indie culture, I started listening to a lot more music from around the world, as I came to grips with my own internalised racism and celebrating my Taiwanese-ness for the first time. I think that process influenced a lot of my approach to making.
You can listen as adventurously, broadly, deeply as possibly, but if it’s all limited to English, that’s like, one-tenth the available music in the world you’re exploring. It was really good for me to go through that. I feel like that whole process imbued something in the music I write. I can’t put a finger on what, but I can’t can’t deny those experiences.
What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?
A huge breakthrough was realising how DIY music making is. Expensive equipment and formal training has crap all to do with music making. From what I’ve experienced, what counts is deep love for music laced with curiosity, tons of patience and resourcefulness to find the sounds you need. Plus having no expectation to ‘succeed’.
There are kids who grow up with private tutoring and access to crazy expensive pianos and violins, who quit the moment they finish school, and then kids with limited access and opportunity, who need to make music. Like skiffle punks gluing bits of wood and string together, kids writing rap verses and spoken word on the train, kids soldering weird electronic things together in their bedrooms to make interesting bleep boops. There’s a deeper love required to make music that goes beyond access and opportunity.
It’s been so nice to meet so many kindred spirits in that latter camp while I’ve figured out this music making thing for myself. Being a solo artist or composer can be a lonely process, so it’s so nice to bring other voices in that process. I love writing songs with people whose arts thing isn’t necessarily music. The rule book is out when I’m writing a song with a comic illustrator and that openness is so good.
In a nutshell, my core feelings about making music are openness to make ‘anything’, wide inclusiveness and untokenistic meaningful diversity in collaborating, and creating and caring for a healthy community of people around you.
How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?
Okay, I have this sassy thought that often pops up.
It’s that, we hold classical musicians in such high esteem, but like, aren’t they just playing really, really, old cover songs? Like, aren’t orchestras just cover bands playing dead people’s music for rich people to listen to, instead of alive people’s music for drunk people to listen to? I don’t really get the difference between someone in coattails playing Mozart for the millionth time vs someone at a bar playing “Riptide” for the millionth time.
So yeah, at least at this point in my thinking, I like the idea of innovation and originality over just repeating things verbatim.
Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?
I really like the discovery in writing music. I like the happy accidents of playing the first three notes on an instrument and trying to build a song from that, or starting with the sound of bicycle bell and seeing where that leads. There’s also this freedom in making sounds on an instrument you have no idea how to play, you’re forced to break your music habits and just try stuff until you make a sound.
One of the most important things I learnt in The Mouldy Lovers was, just try shit. Jam and keep jamming until something interesting sticks. That’s what “composing” looks like for me, instead of jamming with a band, I play along with myself, until there’s a 40 instrumental cacophony that is weird in the right way.
Strangely enough, I think not believing I’m a very good singer was a big part of finding my ‘voice’. I think I’ve used a multitude of instruments and off-kilter sounds to express levels of nuance and complex qualities that a good singer has, that I wish I had. I’m very happy where I’ve ended up, and when I do use my voice, I think of it as another layer in the mix, rather than the centrepiece.
I really admire artists like Sheena, Ringo, and Björk who are incredible composers / multi-instrumentalists and have found confidence in their singing voice.
