Page 113 - ION Indie Magazine SeptOct 2018

MH: I'm currently working on a project based on
lithophones, which is like a stone xylophone. It's an art
project with an Italian label, where my father will write
the poetry and I'll write the music, some of it on
lithophones which I'm building myself. It's a slightly odd
project which is not for profit. The music's available for
free, but seven vinyls will be made and sold as art pieces
and the money goes to buying land which will be blocked
off from humanity forever to let nature run wild.

MW: What other musical instruments do you play apart
from the violin? Oh, and the lithophone?

MH: I started playing the bass, which I liked, but decided
I wanted something a bit more melodic. I can play a bit of
guitar, play a few chords on a keyboard. I program and
write stuff on various instruments. I can pick up any
instrument and make a squeaky noise and sample it. This
album, of course, I've popularised the mouth trumpet.

MW: You've played all round Europe. What are some of
your favourite venues that you've played?

MH: I've gigged in all sorts of places, especially with my previous work which was more atmospheric. I've played

in a Napoleonic bunker in Poland and I've played on a ship in Stockholm harbor. But there's a place in Leipzig
called the Völkerschlachtdenkmal – the Monument to the Battle of Nations – which is beautiful. To give you
an idea of the size, there are 256 full-size stone horses and riders carved into the ceiling. When you click your
fingers, there's a ten and a half second reverb. It's just stunning to play somewhere so amazing.

MW: I remember you coming back from Transylvania once. What was it like to play to a castle full of
vampires?

MH: Yeah, it was great. Ha ha!

MW: You seem to get bigger audiences in Europe than you do on home ground. What would you put that
down to?

MH: I put it down to having an inroad into Europe. I was more accepted there straight away so spent more
time there, and therefore, it flourished more. Whereas, things were a bit slower getting off the ground in the
UK, but it's growing now. I even played America at times when getting gigs in the UK was hard. What I noticed
touring the West Coast was that American audiences were really knowledgeable about what I was doing. At
the time, I was making really obscure records, but people who came knew some of the people that had
guested on tracks and traced them back to their own records. I thought that was brilliant, you know?
Absolutely brilliant that people, if they found something that they liked, went and sought out other stuff.
And we're talking about really obscure, you know? We're talking UK releases where there were 250 to 500
copies. That was very heart-warming.

MW: Thanks, Matt. Good luck with the album!