Metaworld by Matt Flores

"...it's a musical world"

Enter Metaworld: a more driving "intro" for an album doesn't exist.
Matt Flores had his old companion, house legend Tyree Cooper , speak through the rack of his pre-maxi-floorburner "Shortcut Metaworld". With his Chicago rap, Tyree announces the content details for the whole album. Matt Flores' world is his music, his music his world, his metaworld. His album is the attempt to bring the music in his head to vinyl.

"...a little hip hop, ...a little house, drum & bass for sure, jungle for sure...you gotta have it's breaks, so i'll take you on this tour to metaworld: strictly headphone-music....

Music seen from Matz' point of view. If he puts on his headphones, he is in. You don't hear drum&bass nor hip hop on this album, but they are still there, in the back of the mind. Matt Flores Metaworld is the blueprint of all music released on Combination Records, the assimilation of 15 years of club with all its influences from disco, house chords, garage basses, dub, Detroit techno and of course London breakbeats incl. drum&bass.

"I'm never alone..." [Never Alone]

The flow of his music is being fed by the club, being a social place and a room for the most different kinds of music to which one is able to move. Progress was always his middle name. So he is a scientist, always aware of his past and the history of music, but never wanting to be retro. This leads us to the fact that Flores is and always has been ahead of things and that the Gush Collective was the only real alternative to Garage and 2-step from Britain at the time. The media hype was born soon and died away just as fast as the imagination that some kind of sound could be the newest hottest shit for the new millennium. He had to go through this experience. In the mean time, a more free style of breaky dance music came through that doesn't need this kind of theoretical blabla. Matt Flores plays a leading role in this growing scene. He is a dancer himself and knows how to build the most fresh danceable beats. But what is club music? And what will emerge when wanting it all and taking the time to process it all? And, most of all, what happens when the guy also has a voice, has exquisite guest singers and is on top of that a good songwriter? The club album for home use only? The club album for all?

"....this is body-funk-music....." [Let's Save Butter]

Exactly! Funk is Matt Flores' most constant quality. This album blubbers, glitters, rattles, shakes, rocks, pulls, flatters, kicks and caresses, fumbles and shimmers. It is okay to take a break in between, but the funk is always existent. Matt Flores succeeded in having the 21 st century kick of drum&bass collide on some kind of rough folklore we know from jungle and reggae. Listen to these basslines! Sometimes sophisticated, like in "Never Alone" , longing in "Latenight Tube", sometimes wicked like in "Gather Sound" or "Runnin`Pattern".

The flow from futurism to naturalism or digital to organic becomes especially clear in the high tech funky glitter world of "Remenisce". The future changes unexpectedly into the emotional In ure Eyes, that in atmosphere and instrumentation contrasts sharply with the Tommy Guerrero -like guitar. But careful! The beats and the funk are the glue that keep everything together, like in the following again very futuristic and revolutionary "Digital Self". Or with "Gather Sound", where Matt Flores makes one of the most awesome and freshest approaches to the eighties come true.

On Matt Flores' new album the most pathbreaking high tech beats play a major role. At the same time it drops a whole lot of great pop songs. The underground dance scene apparently massively gets back to where the majors in the charts have earned a filthy lot of money with for a long
time: the popsong!

"...it's not a single consciousness, it's a collective consciousness.."

It has been a long journey. On this journey the number of releases was innumerable. It is why on "Metaworld", lots of friends with whom Matt worked, danced and celebrated had to take part. And they join in without taking away Matt's own stream.

Because Matt Flores takes his album personally. His lyrics give an account of his points of view. They are a cry for modesty but they are still funky (Let`s Save Butter). They are about the interchangeability of underground music (Latenight Tube) and last but not least Matt takes apart the know-it-alls-and-that-is-all-they-know ("Judge Me").

Matt Flores' Metaworld is hard to calculate. He is like a hyperactive child that puts everything in its mouth, tastes it, swallows it and after its metabolism has taken care of it and he has sucked up all ingredients, comes forward with something new. Good for us Matt doesn't need to try everything, doesn't experiment on us. He has taken the time before creating his new album. Here, nearly everything is at the right time and place. But there is this always important, phenomenal, decisive "nearly" of the hyperactive child to be tamed, the nearly of the haziness of the Metaworld, the nearly in which errors can be king.

Small discourse on the title of the album:
The concept of the material expression of an idea, clear and defined, coming to us in shape of a book (an album), a patent or a specific object, looses its sharpness in the metaworld of cyberspace. (Source: TAZ 1997 )

Hailing from the heights of Neanderthal, Germany, Matt isn’t just part of the infamous Gush Collective, he has also pioneered Jungle&(digital)Dub , produced UKG w/ ZED BIAS on Contraband and has crafted House with Chicago legend TYREE COOPER on Supa Dupa, Compost Black and Dsoh just to name a few.

mattflor.es