200 Words: MATT JENCIK
(In 200 Words, we highlight a new record we like a lot, via a 200-word review by Marc Masters and 200 words (or so) from the artist about whatever they choose. And sometimes we go extra-long on a record we extra-love...)
MATT JENCIK - Weird Times LP (Hands in the Dark)
It seems odd to say that any ambient music has guts, but that’s what I think about every time I listen to Matt Jencik’s Weird Times. It’s not so much that this is visceral or brawny music; it is in places, though just as often it’s dreamy, languid, and ethereal. But more that, there’s a confident core to Jencik’s abstract essays that makes every track feel purposeful and driving and undeniably resolute. Weird Times is ambience with gravitational force, ghostly music with a hard skeleton, textural intricacy with elemental thrust.
It’s easy to isolate portions of Weird Times that demonstrate its particular power: the simple yet evergreen loops in “Glass Blow” and “The Future Door”, the cinematic sweeps buried beneath “Dead Comet Flyby”, the mirrored ripples in “Doppleganger”, the emotive waves in “Death Dream” that recall the brain-freezing tones of the great Labradford, a band I’m rarely reminded of by music that they themselves didn’t make. But citing examples seems reductionist, because even the tracks that don’t have clear signifiers of Jencik’s sure hands are filled with palpable momentum and centrifugal forward motion. If that suggests that Weird Times has a basis in science, that doesn’t mean its anywhere near clinical. Rather, Jencik has made poetic music that induces a chemical effect, moving neurons as efficiently as it stirs emotions.
Most of the albums I can count among my favorites sound simultaneously familiar and new, as if embracing the past history of a chosen style while at the same time moving that style forward into untrodden territory. I guess it has something to do with scope - with the way art can feel so expansive that it doesn’t just contain contradictions, it resolves them – and the scope of Weird Times makes it my favorite record of the year so far.
– Marc Masters
MATT JENCIK on Weird Times
The title for Weird Times came from a conversation I was having with someone about the current political climate. My response to whatever they were saying was something like “yeah, weird times man.” I certainly never expected when I decided to use the title how prophetic it would turn out to be. I was pretty deep into another phase with “cosmic horror” literature while making this record, I even named a song after the genre. I’ve always liked that H.P. Lovecraft’s usage of the word “weird” meant something more creepy, twisted or sinister, not how it’s mostly used today, something that’s just different or somewhat curious. Everything that’s going on right now seems like an alternate universe, something that cosmic horror writers often write about in their stories. I thought using the Lovecraft version of the word “weird” actually fit current events more so than the current usage.
The record is very inward. All of it was made on headphones and I didn’t hear it through speakers until it was finished. I guess you can say some of the existential dread crept in which made things get dark sometimes but I think there are hopeful tunes in there too.
Weird Times is out now on Hands in the Dark. Buy it here or here.
