Friday, 18 November 2011 11:08
In the hot seat: Noah Mattern
Noah "Atarilogic" Mattern recently released his album "Lost Plot." / By Tim Brouk/Journal & Courier
Noah "Atarilogic" Mattern released his latest batch of sample-heavy, layered hip-hop beats to digital and disc on Nov. 11. Seventeen tracks strong, "Lost Plot" is available on iTunes, Amazon.com and CDbaby.com for download, and CD copies are available locally at Von's Records.
1 How does "Lost Plot" compare to your last album, "Moody Uzis?"
"Moody Uzis" was sort of written over the course of 10 or so years, so it was kind like my "Best of." Now with "Lost Plot," it's reflective of the name. I just decided to banish concept. It's stuff that has stood out to me the last couple years. It's about losing the "Plot."
2 What is the "Plot?"
The idea behind "Lost Plot" was to get away from a specific concept and let the album go where it needed to go. I didn't want to do a concept album. I still wanna do a concept album, but it wasn't as important this time around. Especially in a lot of lyrical hip-hop, it's too serious. I didn't want to come off as serious. ... I wanted to include a number of different concepts without making a concept album.
3 How do you compile and create your beats and sounds?
I had some things that I wrote just completely new in the space of a couple weeks and arranged them. And there were some leftovers from back even when I was compiling "Moody Uzis" where I was like "I should really finish that beat." I actually found some new things and learned some new techniques. ... I would say there are still a couple from way back that I just never released. "Highland Park" was one from way, way back, and "Super Beatnik Breaks" was one of those. Conversely, tracks like "Dark Proverb" are totally new, and I even had Jeff Anderson, a local singer-songwriter, play guitar on that one.
4 What music influences did you have when putting "Lost Plot" together?
It's still very much the Brooklyn sort of ethic hip-hop, very beat orientated. At the same time, I used some new production techniques. Songs like "Rite of Blaphomet" is more symphonic than punchy, hip-hoppy stuff. It's more early '70s avant garde jazz influenced.
5 What kind of recording techniques did you use for "Lost Plot"?
I actually recorded a lot more actual instruments this time around. On "Moody Uzis," it was very sample orientated. This is still very sample-orientated. I changed some of the recordings I made to make it sound like it's coming off an old tape loop or old vinyl. It's sort of similar to a lot of the techniques Portishead might use to make their songs sound very retro or dark, vintagey. More experimental this time around for sure.
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