matt espy: hawksworth

Matt Espy is an American drummer and percussionist. Born in Dayton, Ohio, he spent his youth playing every genre of music he could find, playing out in clubs starting at age 14 and launching his touring career at 18. He moved to Chicago in 1996 and continued his journey playing rock, avant-garde, jazz, and performance art pieces. He's played drums for a number of groups and charismatic individuals, including Atombombpocketknife, Duke Special and The Mountain Goats. Over the past decade, he's found his home with Dead Rider, also on Drag City. Hawksworth is Matt's first solo adventure. In the field of solo drumming albums, it's an avian psychedelic percussion trip all of its own. A dialogue between birds, electronics, and drums, Hawksworth operates along precise degrees in the vastness that exists between the diverse poles of Terry Riley and Martin Denny. It captures one particularly memorable morning walk from long ago, a time immemorial in Matt's life. In this new musical rendering, that fateful morning is ridden with wormholes throughout the piece, like hyperspace links that travel to motifs from his 30-plus years music career with every step along the way. The inspiration for the album came to Matt all at once a couple years back. It was early pandemic times, and the world outside his home felt drained of people, which brought the sounds of the world without people to his attention. It took awhile for the impact of that to settle in. One day -- while, naturally, listening to music, he heard a pop song employing the barking of a dog as percussion, and sat up with a start. Was it real, or... Like a bolt from the blue, the sonic and the visual design for Hawksworth came whole cloth, completely evident to him in that moment. It was done, and all it needed now was to be executed. Birdsong as a transformative element had first affected Matt during this almost-mythic teenage perambulation of his. It was an early a.m., post hallucinogenic, walk of shame; a night of wonder, followed by the cold light of dawning. As he made his way back home, the wonder began to kick and flicker again, and the sounds of the birds in the trees above caused the possibilities of the world to open up wide. Now, all these years later, he thought about recharting that path through lostness and inspiration, to once again find the places where nature and HIS nature -- the drums -- became one...