Lies in Reach by Matthew Lyon, released 04 September 2024
1. Fall in Place
2. Cast in Illusion
3. Lessons in Forgetting
4. Patience in Longing
5. Missing in Reflection
6. Disconnect in Character
7. Lies in Reach
8. Seen in Relief
9. Passion in Repair
Bringing forth an exciting and delightfully leftfield selection of music to delight, confound and enrich your life, Matthew Lyon has a knack for finding and arranging sounds others would not consider, and somehow forcing them together with his expert songcraft in a manner you're likely to find consistently rewarding.
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INTERVIEW
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George Ernst (Triplicate Records): Can you tell us a little about your approach to crafting this delightfully off-kilter selection of songs?
Matthew Lyon: I didn't plan it this way, but the writing process coincided with therapy work that would finally detangle the effects of decades-old traumas I never dealt with. My creative process is very intuitive, but I'd get about halfway into a piece and realize like, with the title track: oh, this is about the time I almost joined a cult, and other destructive temptations or habits like compulsive white lies, but also the people in my life who've been lifelines by helping me through hard times, where the theme was a threshold of change to my notion of self.
I'd build these little narratives of mood to guide the piece, but it was a surprise for me each time. After five of these pieces went this way, I realized I had a larger story I wanted to tell through the contours of mood and energy. I did a few pieces that are similar stylistically but different thematically – more of a playful musical instead of a brooding drama – that are going towards another release.
Much of the sound design was inspired by sensorial processes. 'Disconnect in Character' in particular was inspired by sensorial overload, emotional dysregulation, dysphoria, and masking — all things that became essential lenses for my family through pandemic lockdown times. I also took inspiration from the rhythms of heartbeats and breath, which are helpful in emotional centering.
The experiments with making speech synthesis sound like singing were inspired by a recent diagnosis for Auditory Processing Disorder, an impairment of how the brain processes speech sounds into words, and I wanted to mimic how I hear a lot of lyrical music I'm not super familiar with. I really liked the effect, and it helped me create characters in the stories I made up around the pieces, but also encouraged me to pull in musical ideas from outside what's normally considered electronic music.
GE: If you're eating french fries, do you squirt a puddle of condiments in the corner to dip in or are you one of those people who just sort of douses the whole tray in ketchup haphazardly?
ML: I prefer malt vinegar, which doesn't lend itself to dipping and begs for the haphazard dousing. It's increasingly rare to find anymore, so I put sauce on the side because without the malt vinegar my fries are fair game for my wife & kid, and the kid doesn't need more help creating messes. Except the bits: the salty, crunchy bits. Those are mine. I'm like Stephen Universe with fries: Give me the bits!
GE: What was the inspiration behind the unusual naming convention behind the tracks on Lies in Reach?
ML: Each of 'lessons in forgetting', 'seen in relief', 'lies in reach', and 'disconnect in character' came out of my notes from therapy early during the writing & recording process.
I was re-examining a lot of things from my past and looking at them from new perspectives, making new meaning about them, and I liked how those phrases as titles each carried multiple meanings: both the title and musical theme of "Lessons in Forgetting" are to me about both being forced to emotionally leave parts of myself behind in order to survive in a hostile school environment, as well as claiming for my own the things I learned about how to function as a person with undiagnosed ADHD.
It would have felt weird to me to not extend the convention to the entire record, and anyway, "Missing in Reflection" was in part inspired by a time in my life when a roommate seriously accused me of being a vampire.
GE: If you could sum up the mood of this record in a single sentence, what would it be?
ML: An optimistic drama about the effects of over four decades of undiagnosed dysthymia (chronic, persistent depression).
GE: Would you rather be chased by a relatively slow rhino or the restless spirit of Iron Sheik?
ML: That's tough – what kind of rhino? There's a lot of variability with them, like with bears. How “relatively” slow is it? Those things are fast! How far away am I starting from? On the other hand, what is a spirit going to be able to do? I guess I'd tentatively go with the rhino? It seems they'll mostly leave you alone once they don't consider you a threat anymore. My ability for long-term threat assessment has been consumed by life in the 2020s.
GE: What's your favourite track on the record? Mine's 'Seen in Relief'. Lovely tune.
ML: Thanks! I go back and forth between 'Disconnect in Character' and 'Lies in Reach' – both of them touch different but very deeply personal experiences.
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REVIEW
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Matthew Lyon brings forth an exciting and delightfully leftfield selection of music to delight, confound and enrich your life. 'Lies in Reach' is his first release on Triplicate Records, so let's examine just why it is that this wonderfully unusual set is worth listening to.
At first, the brief yet effective opener 'Fall in Place' indeed brings to mind a sort of protracted hypnic jerk, wherein the unusualness of what's to come is laid out candidly. It's an intriguing beginning, and quickly rewarding when things settle nicely into forward motion with the first fully formed song, the lengthy 'Cast in Illusion'.
A Lumbering mechanistic beat quickly struggles into frame and gradually builds a brilliant groove amid flurries of airy pads and an adventurous bendy synthesizer arrangement. The mood we've immediately settled into is a sort of melancholic mystique with flashes of wide-eyed wonder. It's a compelling answer to the intangible intrigue set out by the opener.
Similarly meaty, 'Lessons in Forgetting' then plods menacing into view. It's around this point when it becomes apparent that amongst other things, a great strength of Lyon's craft is dedicated to crafting creative beats in odd time signatures. Soaked in glitchy distortion and complimented nicely with synthesized horns. There's a sense of things not being quite right. Not in terms of composition; that's handled rather brilliantly. It's a deliberately cultivated sense of unease that immediately gets to work setting the record apart simple bedroom electronica.
Next up, 'Patience in Longing' eases back the complexity in percussion slightly, opting to focus on intricate interplay between delicate keyboard tones and long, reverb laden pads that indeed seem to portray a powerful sense of longing. At first there's an air of confusion, but that slowly detours into focused melancholia. 'Longing' is complimented neatly by the following 'Missing in Reflection', a shorter piece featuring distant warblings and insect electronica. Here, the aforementioned longing seems to have settled into some kind of gloomy acceptance. Of what, I cannot say, but that's the beauty of interpretive instrumental music.
Imagery that springs to mind constantly throughout the 'Lies in Reach' listening experience is a light in darkness. It's not a searchlight, no attempt is being made to make sense of the dark world Lyon conjures. It's more like a celebration of the moods in between moods. Between waking and sleeping. The bizarre yet immaculately crafted 'Disconnect in Character' is emblematic of this overall vibe, with its fractured glitch-pop beat and warped melody. Nothing on the record comes off as heavy-handed, even when things get a little abrasive. Lyon is, it seems, a master of knowing when to lay on the intrigue and when to roll it back, constructing arrangements in style usually vulnerable to overextension, yet no track outstays its welcome.
The title track, 'Lies in Reach', suitably is the longest piece on the record. It's an odyssey and a half, and a meditation on the intangible. A choppy, punchy percussion section anchors the song into a coolly consistent groove in which Lyon seems to take joy jamming over with every aural toy in his box of unconventional tricks. It's a standout piece of music that crafts a tight and enjoyable listening experience; warped and weird in the best way possible. Buckle up for the second half. The floor is swept away!
Elsewhere, 'Seen in Relief' utilizes a subtle pad melody that might just be the prettiest piece of music on the whole album. Earthbound-esque, and endlessly relaxing at first, before settling into a barely-there yet undeniably appealing rhythm, which the melodic arrangement is given the duty of carrying, until the popping percussion finds its footing amid a crying synth line. Powerful.
Finally, the soft and slick 'Passion in Repair' rounds things off with ghostly melodic excursions, held together tentatively by some of the most leftfield percussive work you're likely to hear this year. The elements of this track, and indeed the entire album feel rare. Rare in the sense that you've probably heard the textures somewhere, if you can recall. But you can't. Lyon has a knack for finding and arranging sounds others would not consider, and somehow forcing them together with his expert songcraft in a manner you're likely to find consistently rewarding.