Matthias Zimmermann

In this day and age it’s more and more rare for A&Rs to stumble upon a new artist with zero previous discographic experience and be blown away to the point of signing him immediately. Sure we get a lot of demos and promos in our drop box (there seems to be less and less differences between the two as bedroom producers become more and more precocious, self-aware, tech-savvy and career-oriented) and contrarily to our pre-podcast days we tend to listen to them all (it’s not easy finding half an hour long of good and brand new music every week!) but we are rarely impressed by the generic dullness and predictability of today’s internet scene caused by the over-saturation of myspaces and now soundclouds, not to mention that nowadays every producer seems to have had a release on someone’s (or their own) micro-label before even getting close to artistic maturity. Enters Matthias Zimmermann. Matthias’ music sounds so right, so focused, with the perfect amount of artistic flair and genuine originality to appear absolutely unpredictable and effortlessly blur lines between genres, that it’s hard not to think “this can’t be his first release, he must be a famous artist under another secret moniker”. Think again. Apart from unofficial homemade remixes and early style-searching tracks there is no trace of Matthias Zimmermann’s music before the “Isla Dub” EP. He sent us these 4 tracks in the exact same versions that we are putting out today. We were struck right away by Matthias’ immense talent as a composer, the cinematic (in a non boring trip-hoppy way but rather in a Carpenter-to-John-Williams kinda way) aspect of his tracks clashing with the very contemporary club flavour of it, and the easiness with which he seems to hop between a funk-heavy party-house set-ender (“Fez”), a slowed-down-Jurassic-Park epic deep bass number (“Luther”), a joyful oceanic synth-step jam (“Olga”) and a seriously poignant analog techno set-starter (“Karl”). While Matthias Zimmermann’s perfect command of different sub-genres of club music is undeniable, what’s even more spectacular is the way he ties it all together in a prodigious display of natural coherence reminiscent —in slightly different musical contexts— of his german countrymen Siriusmo and Modeselektor. While going in multiple directions, all 4 tracks of the “Isla Dub” EP evoke a strong sense of introspection and melancholy supported by the alternation of orchestral (but not pompous) melodies on one side and sound design worthy of early episodes of Lost (forest noises, unexplained thumping sounds in “Luther”, bird tweets and whistles in “Fez”) on the other. These tracks will appeal to aficionados of current slow and sexy house styles, lovers of futuristic UK-born hybrid styles as well as fans of the home-listening experience. It’s truly the first Sound Pellegrino release I could see my mother bump in her living room, near the fireplace, on a snowy december evening. The EP transcends its own club function and appears as more of a coherent piece of music than a series of tools (which it, weirdly enough, also is). There’s also the fact Matthias made up an entire backstory in his head to serve as a background for “Isla Dub”, in which Karl, Luther, Fez and Olga are all inhabitants of a mysterious adventure-filled island. Listen to it: in a bizarre way it makes perfect sense. We at Sound Pellegrino are very proud to support and introduce the world to the burgeoning career of Matthias Zimmermann, our first ever German signing, a great modern composer, an inspired story teller, a true musical adventurer, the John Locke of modern house music. —Teki Latex