Daiana Feuer on March 25th, 2016

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Ten years ago, Matthew David McQueen moved to Los Angeles and quickly immersed himself in the emerging “beats” scene, also finding a community of friends and musicians straddling genres of experimentation through the DJ collective, Dublab. While establishing his own style of sonic collage with a hip-hop foundation — in fact, using samples from New Age cassettes in his collection — McQueen felt a spiritual tug towards ambient, therapeutic, mystical music and began making some himself. Today marks the release of “Trust the Guide And Glide” [streaming in full below] through Leaving Records, a double-album of “New Age age bliss and ecstasy music.” Created over the last four years, McQueen began conducting New Age experiments live on his Dublab radio show, taking the sessions home and filling them in with a cosmic crayon until he had 88 complete minutes of mindful meditation music.

In this interview, Matthewdavid shares his process of experimentation and how music helped him through troubled times.

||| Watch: “Unfolding Atlantis”

What kind of music were you making before you moved to L.A.?

I was in Tallahassee, Fla., right before moving here. And I started making music in high school on Fruity Loops, which is a now more infamous beat programming software that was highly pirated in the late ’90s/early 2000s for early trap music and is now sort of known as trap production software. But that’s where I started. I went back up to Atlanta one summer when I was in high school and reconnected with some friends. Funny inner-city white kids making rap music with these black kids, and I went out one night with them and they were all on their computers making music. So I came back to Florida and found ways to do it myself using DIY recording music production software. Started off my hip-hop foundation. In college I went on my various vision quests to electronic music and noise and experimental and then by the time I moved to L.A., it was really wide open, absorbing everything. In short, that’s the origin of my creative beginnings in music. My parents forced me into piano and guitar when I was younger, but they had great music too. I feel blessed to have been brought up with a great record collection.

So when did you start getting into New Age music?

Well, there’s two answers. The first one: When I got into collecting cassettes was when I was having to do community service at a Goodwill in Florida in college. And I was just coming across all these really great tapes I had never heard of or seen on another format. A lot of them were New Age tapes. Just being exploratory and wanting to discover new sounds, or forgotten unheard music. I started sampling from those tapes in my bedroom on my laptop, around 2004, 2005. A lot of them were cheesy, a lot of them were rare and obscure really interesting devotional music. But I was sampling that and making an experimental electronic collage from these tapes.

I really found this music as a healing force. Certain works of art and literature and music were introduced to me to help me cope with circumstances that I was facing.

When I moved to L.A., that was a lot of the body of work that I had compiled for my first release, which was a digital-only release on Plug Research, where I was interning, there and at Dublab. The label boss was really into my music. I had just sent him some stuff on CD. But that stuff ended up floating around to Flying Lotus, who had a record out on that label, and he kind of spread it to people. This hippie outsider kid making hip-hop beats but also doing lo-fi collage, and that was cool. My thing was I’m going to be a beatmaker sampling from funny new age tapes basically. So then time goes by and I start making more beats and my record comes out on Brainfeeder.

Then there was a time in my life about four years ago when I had some heavy stuff happen personally. And I was calling on the help of some friends and family and the community and loved ones to help me out, seeking therapy, and I really found this music as a healing force. Certain works of art and literature and music were introduced to me to help me cope with circumstances that I was facing. A couple very potent New Age records were introduced to me. One in particular by Michael Sterns, called “Planetary Unfolding,” which is this epic space music holy grail masterpiece, very theatrical, very cinematic. Reading certain philosophical works and listening to this record and others like it was very influential and carved out a new path that I wanted to follow from that point forward in my life. And that’s when I became devoted and to making the music that’s on “Trust the Guide And Glide.” Those recording started around that time until more recently, spanning four years of getting very intimately involved with this music. Mostly for me it started off as a therapeutic device, using my production process and technical know-how to form dense zones that I could bathe in and do some work to find myself within. That’s kind of I guess the story there.

Did you make it all on the computer? I’m imagining your spiritual moment pressing the arrow keys.

Yeah, let’s talk about that. So I had a Dublab show, I still do. During that time I was using my Dublab show, I would go on the air and DJ records every Wednesday from noon to 2, but during that time I was really into exploring and experimenting with sounds. I have an array of synthesizers and lots of plug-ins on my computer that I use, but I was using that time to experiment with sounds in this way and that was kind of my platform for experimentation. It was also just live being broadcast so I was laying down and recording and broadcasting these experimental long form meditative sound sessions. A lot of the material on the record is sourced from those initial recordings. Every week carving out that time, being blessed with that time outside of my home comfort zone, into another sort of zone where I could just focus on building sounds. An array of outboard and software and analog and digital devices and instruments, laying down something and then using that as the source or sample base to elaborate or embellish upon later. That’s kind of how my process worked. I laid down a bunch of stuff with instruments, take that throw it into samplers on the computer and stretch it out and really elaborate.

It sounds like your Dublab show served as your therapy sessions.

It was. It kind of was.

When making music like this, as opposed to beats music, the trajectory is different. Do you go in with a plan or do you have to allow the music to take you where it wants to go?

There’s a practical and formulated structure for making beats or pop-leaning music. With this stuff, I think about what instruments I want to use. I’ve been learning flute lately, so I will have my flute, a synthesizer and a loop pedal and see where that takes me after an hour or two. Before, I just had a couple go-to synthesizers, a few plug-in instruments I liked to use. I can noodle around with guitar and my voice too, to create these densely layered zones that can later be re-sampled and reprocessed into something greater and bigger and more lush.

Being the freak that I am, the freaky sound composer that I am, I tend to make maximalist lush music a lot of the time.

Is there a goal to achieve the most ultimate, most layered, most lush composition that you can make?

I don’t know, they’re each so different. And I’m really into minimal music too, but the way that this music sounds now, it has a lot of movement and texture. That’s just my fascination with collage and sound design and noise, which is to me very therapeutic and engaging and participatory and requires a more active, for me, active and alluring listening experience. At the same time, paradoxically, just minimal drone or relaxation environmental sounds are just as therapeutic. But me, being the freak that I am, the freaky sound composer that I am, I tend to make maximalist lush music a lot of the time. But that’s just because I want to keep experimenting and layering and layering — I know when I go too far and then I back up. I just hit undo a bunch of times, whatever. Because I really like using compression and that is a way to fuse or meld sounds and frequencies and mash them into one another. There’s an interesting and flattering harmonic way to do that recently, where frequencies start breathing with one another. It’s all part of the experimentation.

What do you mean by breathing?

Sonically, like a pulling and pushing, throbbing, undulating wave like sound.

That might be what makes it therapeutic. The breath of a person is what relaxes or unrelaxes them. If you’re making music that mimics breathing, you can alter the state of the person listening.

That’s why I love amorphous phasing frequencies of sound and textures. I like things to feel effortlessly shifting, in flux but in a very smooth flux. Phasers on top of phasers on top of phasers make for this cosmic shifting sound. I have no reservations about using lots of effects and electronics to achieve a desired outcome. It’s interesting and funny how people hold back on effects because you’re taught not to do that, to only use effects when needed. But I have never approached the creative process like that. I just wildly instinctually go for it with this music, and using some of the same sentiments but a little more carefully. I have a more mature relationship with frequency and sound now.

This is the music of now. But also my intention is to carry an ancient quality to it, a simplicity within the chaos. I know that’s a paradox but I kind of love it.

But doesn’t that make more sense for the times? You’re not making throwback music. You’re making music for now.

Totally. With the cover art and the durations of the songs, the language and annotations, I did want to revert back to some of these old private issue records in homage or carrying the torch. But the music definitely sounds current and by no mistake uses what’s current. That’s an important point and intention, that this is the music of now. But also my intention is to carry an ancient quality to it, a simplicity within the chaos. I know that’s a paradox but I kind of love it.

Well, yeah, there’s the way you make it and then there’s the way it should be experienced so there are two different ways you can talk about it.

Totally. Also, you need the album in its beautiful package. It’s probably the most attention to detail in the packaging that I’ve ever done.

That’s another interesting aspect. You’re not just the artist making music, you get to create the whole thing, the art, the packaging, the the whole process of release.

I’ve always felt a little awkward in self-promoting my music or marketing my own music, which is why I released my music on other labels and focused on other people’s music on my label. But for this one it felt just so right and it felt like I had taken the time to reach this point and I have this understanding that its ok to give this project what it deserves. Being the creative curator that I am these days, there wouldn’t be anyone that I would necessarily trust to formulate and package this material other than myself and my partner, who helped me lay out and design and format the visual elements and package it correctly, Jesse Moretti, who started Leaving Records with me. We’ve gone a crazy journey together but we’re so still close and friends and its amazing to have her on my team. She gets me and my philosophy around this album, so she helped me realize my vision here. I also worked very closely with my friend Douglas McGowen. He helped us with the Laraaji set of reissues we made and he’s been working with me on other things we have brewing. But the art wouldn’t have been possible without him introducing me to the daughter of Gilbert Williams, who manages his archive. The music was done but I had to get this painting for the cover and I was willing to do whatever it took to get it. It took over a year, but we finally got it. Yeah, lots of time and attention to detail went into this, so I’m feeling very grateful.

It’s your precious little baby.

It kind of is. It’s a piece of my art, a big piece actually. It feels good.

You can have a mystical experience at Low End Theory or you can have a mystical experience just breathing or listening to ambient drone.

Were you influenced by the sort of (non-religious) spiritual revival atmosphere of Los Angeles? What part do you think you playing in it?

Across genre it seems now it’s being expressed and surfacing. I’m very aware of that happening. I mean, I’m a spiritual person, Daiana, and I’ve had to do a lot of work on healing myself and finding my center and that’s what this music is dedicated to. I’m finding out now lots of my friends and music and art community do the same stuff and are into meditating and what have you, and using music as therapy more and more. And actually make or listen to this kind of music, in addition to whatever kind of music they are known for. That’s why I started the Modern New Age series on Leaving, to highlight contemporary music and composers creating this stuff now. I feel like it is relevant and I feel very much a part of it. I think it resonates with people.

Also, on the other side of that — there’s lots of different things to talk about on this topic — but it can also be deterring and a turn-off, the term “New Age” or “spirituality” when you talk about art and music, especially music. I wear it on my sleeve right now because I think its super important and very cool to be fluid with genre and introduce fans who might be into beats and Low End Theory to this stuff. And being like. ‘Hey man, it’s not all that different.’ You can have a mystical experience at Low End Theory or you can have a mystical experience just breathing or listening to ambient drone. So I invite all folks from different backgrounds and styles of music to entertain this more spiritual sound. If anything, just to see what it does for them.

||| Stream: “Trust the Guide and Glide”