“The artist that makes that work is in a noise community rather than a composition community,” explains Whitney Johnson, the Chicago musician who writes and performs music as Matchess.
While Johnson has released music under both her given name and her moniker of Matchess, she’s clear to explain the sonic differences, as well as the songwriting process as a whole, between what she calls her two alter ego personalities.
“It’s two sides of myself. One has a minimal aesthetic and is a little more precise, more scientifically oriented, or academic, for lack of a better word,” she says of the past music and art that she has released under her given name. “The Matchess project is a little more soupy and confusing, the production is really muddy, and more songs that come to me in my head, that I then record.”
The artist, however, is currently touring to support her 2022 album Sonescent, along with two upcoming releases slated for September on Drag City Records.
Johnson’s Matchess releases tend to experiment with sound rather than following more standard conventional song structures. Some of these, Johnson explains, will take inspiration and shape from field recordings in sound and visual mediums that are assembled in collage like fashion.
While in the past, Johnson has maintained a bit of a divide between the artistic creator that is Whitney Johnson and the asymphonic musical project that is Matchess, with the upcoming two albums, she aims to distinguish more between the two and delve more into each approach on the respective albums.
On Wednesday, July 24th, Matchess will perform at The Holland Project, featuring artists Haley Fohr and Jenny Pulse to round out her live sound.
“I haven’t really played much with collaborators before. This is the first time where people are improvising and bringing in their own sound. And it’s been really liberating for me. It gives me something to respond to that’s not just all in my own mind,” Johnson explains.
Johnson’s vision for the upcoming Hav album includes a full length record created using only five instruments. Marimba, viola, synthesizer, halldorophone, and sine wave variations, create a musical backdrop for a recording inspired in part by Johnson’s travels in Greece and Cyprus where she researched the Greek god Hermaphroditus, as well as a notable period of time spent living alone in a barn in the Swedish countryside. Parts of these travels included Johnson recording scenes on camcorder where she contemplated the contrast of the worship of a past stagnant figure with the active movement of water or plants in the video scenes where movement is representative of the present.
On the verge of releasing two albums, Hav and Stena, as well as touring with collaborative performers, Whitney Johnson recognizes that even her music can be altered in the live show setting. In regards to Matchess featuring a trio of women performing, Johnson says that it “opens things up to a sacred communal ritual feeling.”
“Something as simple as me lighting a candle or two, and the songs – sometimes just playing a single note for a long time while other things are changing in the background, it lends this sacred quality to it.”
Matchess performs at the Holland Project on Wednesday, July 24th with support from Bijou Bell and a noise set performed by Velvet Pouch.
Full information can be found here.
