{"id":1613,"date":"2009-02-11T14:00:44","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T22:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evolvingmusic.wordpress.com\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2009-02-11T14:00:44","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T22:00:44","slug":"trakz-artist-spotlight-mat-mchugh-and-the-blackbird-under-the-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/2009\/02\/11\/trakz-artist-spotlight-mat-mchugh-and-the-blackbird-under-the-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Tra.kz Artist Spotlight: Mat McHugh and the Blackbird (&quot;Under the Landslide&quot;)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The element of surprise has been a cornerstone of great music forever: think Bob Dylan&#8217;s electric revolution, or every second album by Neil Young, or the Clash&#8217;s outrageous triple-disc sprawl, Sandinista! All and none of them were on <a class=\"xLink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.matmchugh.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mat McHugh&#8217;s<\/a> mind when he took time out from his day job as founder-singer-songwriter of <a class=\"xLink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/thebeautifulgirls\" target=\"_blank\">the Beautiful Girls<\/a> to record this playful, profound and provocative solo debut, SEPERATISTA!<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve never heard of <a class=\"xLink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/matmchugh\" target=\"_blank\">Mat McHugh and the Blackbird<\/a>, listen up: he will rock your world. <a class=\"xLink\" href=\"http:\/\/tra.kz\/m\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s a dreamy, pop-psych track called &#8220;Under the Landslide<\/a>&#8221; off his new album, SEPERATISTA!, a free-floating animal of rare sensitivity and grace, recorded with a band largely seconded from the Sydney jazz scene. Off-kilter drums, deep bass, horns, piano, organ, melodica and cello flesh out Mat&#8217;s voice, acoustic guitar and occasional ukulele on an album rich in precious sonic details.<\/p>\n<p>Each story traces its way back to Mat&#8217;s time spent in India and the Black Bird, which features in the Beautiful Girls song quiver, is back and central to the albums imagery, as Mat explains: &#8220;When I lived in India I stayed in an Ashram on the Ganges River where every morning before dawn a big black crow would land on my window sill and wake me. I was kind of spaced out at the time because of all the Malaria medication and I kept having these dreams that the bird was trying to tell me something.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Be look out for big things in 2009 from Mat McHugh, Controlled Substance Sound Labs standout new artist.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1614 aligncenter\" title=\"matmchugh5083_copy_low_res\" src=\"http:\/\/evolvingmusic.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/02\/matmchugh5083_copy_low_res.jpg?w=300\" alt=\"matmchugh5083_copy_low_res\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/matmchugh5083_copy_low_res.jpg 380w, http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/matmchugh5083_copy_low_res-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The element of surprise has been a cornerstone of great music forever: think Bob Dylan&#8217;s electric revolution, or every second album by Neil Young, or the Clash&#8217;s outrageous triple-disc sprawl, Sandinista! All and none of them were on Mat McHugh&#8217;s mind when he took time out from his day job as founder-singer-songwriter of the Beautiful [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[25,39],"tags":[268,1142,1294,1620,1810,1815,1923],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mixmatchmusic.com\/evolvingmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}