Matt Christensen is the main creative input into Muthi. PHOTOS BY DEREK BREMNER; COURTESY OF DIRTY MELODY RECORDS
The pandemic was a turning point, musically, for Matt Christensen, the main man behind indie psych project Muthi; He grew up with heavy metal and played in metals bands to that point.
The London-based musician chatted with Jam in the Stream recently ahead of his third single since late last year, “This Could Be It,” dropping Friday (March 7). The singles are preludes to Muthi’s second album that is tentatively slated for the middle of this year.
Mcbess illustrated this piece for Muthi’s next single, “This Could Be It,” which will be available on the streaming services Friday. IMAGE COURTESY OF DIRTY MELODY RECORDS
Sure, he was already involved with the related Mcbaise project at that point.
“But, yeah, I think as well there was a bit of a shift in the type of music I responded to,” he said. “I think the pandemic was a massive dividing line for me. Playing in (alt metal band) Heavy Menthol and being a fan of metal, and I still do kind of love metal, but the things on the darker side I just couldn’t really process or didn’t have any resonance anymore.
“So I started to explore different moods,” he said. “This just became something I felt I responded to more. There was something else I needed to address there.”
As I put it in our conversation, I’m glad he decided to address those things.
And, for that matter, we got to address quite a bit in what amounted to about an hour-long video-chat conversation in January: Christensen’s growing up in South Africa, his previous music credits (which do NOT include writing children’s sleepy-time instrumentals as suggested by one website; go ahead and insert joke about believing everything you read on the Internet), his involvement with Mcbaise, Mcbaise’s involvement with Muthi, Christensen’s role as marketing director for The Dudes, and some light shed on a few of his songs such as “Witchcraft.”
Matt Christensen (left) and Matthieu Bessudo (aka mcbess) first met through the London metal scene. PHOTO COURTESY OF DIRTY MELODY RECORDS
Muthi is closely related to the indie psyche project Mcbaise and its muse, mcbess, whom I interviewed about two years ago in London (it’s linked here). Not only has Christensen done some of the drum tracks for Mcbaise recordings, but mcbess is very involved with Muthi. They are both on the associated independent record label Dirty Melody Records.
Mcbaise, or mcbess, aka Matthieu Bessudo, lays down the synths and bass lines for Muthi and also provides some production work in the studio.
“We have been playing together in bands for a while,” he said. “In previous bands we would gig together, like opening for Dead Pirates and vice versa. And, yeah, we have been friends for ages and we played on a couple of other projects (including Heavy Menthol). And then during the pandemic, he had a newborn kid and we were all sort of stuck at home. We were like, we should do something.
The Muthi and Mcbaise projects are an integrated sound, in a sense. PHOTO COURTESY OF DIRTY MELODY RECORDS
“(Muthi) is very much a collaboration between the two of us. I am sort of the principal song writer, but he handles everything having to do with bass and keys, and he’s sort of invaluable from that perspective, and he’s also very involved from the production side. … It is very much a collaborative effort.”
Both projects’ most recent LPs, Muthi’s Visions and Mcbaise’s Tubes, released in 2021, were actually recorded in the same studio at just about the same time, and while this round is taking longer, they are also concurrently working on their next albums again.
“This one is slightly different,” he said. “We are sort of exploring different ways of recording and getting stuff down. And a lot of it is (being done) in pieces. So we’ll do all of the vocals and a few months later do all of the whatever. Incrementally, it is being done in a much longer time period. And I’m quite an impatient human being, so I like to get that stuff done quickly, but, yeah, it is always fun to put that stuff together.”
Mcbess, whose related companies include the aforementioned Dudes, a boutique clothing store selling art and clothing with his illustrations and vinyl from the Dirty Melody Records indie label, has illustrated the accompanying artwork for these three singles, which includes the songs “Palissades,” and “Witchcraft.”
Christensen’s role as lead on Muthi includes writing lyrics, lead vocals and playing guitar and drums. He’s long been a professional writer, and he previously worked in corporate communications.
“It’s kind of my first project being out front,” he said. “I started playing guitar from the age of 10, and I started playing drums a few years later. There was so much more demand for drummers. They (were) harder to come by and I found if you can just hold a steady beat, you know, then you can get somewhere.”
Between you and me, I’ll tell you where it’s ultimately gotten him: a front seat on one of the most creative, though under-appreciated, modern indie psychedelic rock vehicles anywhere in the world.
That’s not a short distance from his South African upbringing.
The name Muthi comes from South Africa, he said.
“It’s a Zulu word,” he said. “It’s a word that originates in the world of African spiritualism. And muthi, in that context, refers to plants and vegetation and herbs. It’s like a complete sort of herbology practice. Those sort of naturally occurring resources are prepared and used with healing or in some cases alter circumstances, to really sort of alter reality itself.”
It’s also used as short-hand there for medicine in general, he said.
“Growing up, Oh yeah, I got a cold, I need some good muthi, if that makes sense,” he said.
The reality-altering meaning works better with the sort of medicine this project served up on the debut album, Visions.
Dirty Melody’s band page for Muthi puts it this way: “Drawing influence from Christensen's background growing up in Africa, nocturnal exploits around the world and various misadventures, Muthi resides in the world of poppy psychedelia, with just a hint of paranoia to keep things spicy.”
Give a listen to the song “Dragon Mountain,” for instance.
“I better check my vital signs Sometimes I tend to lose the track of time
Let’s take a ride or take a flight
Sounds nice, I’m tired of talking all the time. ”
I asked Christensen what (music) influences inform this project.
“It depends on the mood,” Christensen said. “And it depends on what grabs me. It can come from different places. It doesn’t necessarily have to be musical, of course.
“Often, music is a response to an emotion or a memory or something like that rather than trying to sound specifically like something. So like a sonic expression of like a color or an ambiance or something. But in terms of musically, my background, I guess the music that I heard in my home as a child was stuff like Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album, which was huge for us in South Africa at the time in the 80s. It was a very bizarre place to grow up, and I’ve only realized how bizarre once I left. But, that was a big one.”
He mentioned Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Queen, Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan.
Christensen pointed out that music was censored in apartheid-era South Africa, though much more during his father’s time, but “but certainly films were doctored for certain phrases or scenes, and some big international bands we never heard about until after the government changed in ’94,” he noted in a follow-up email.
“We had sort of equal parts of like the U.K. and the U.S., sort of the big names, and a lot of really good local music, as well, if you knew where to look.”
He mentioned South Afridan singer/songwriter Johnny Clegg.
“Muthi is not a political band by any stretch,” he said, in the follow-up email. “I’m not addressing any sort of race or identity issues with my music. But of course my background and upbringing does have some bearing on who I am, consciously or not. Especially as a white South African I am conscious that me and my family had a much easier time of things in those days precisely because we were white, so I don’t want it to seem like I’m speaking for anyone but myself.”
He said there is a lot of African music he finds interesting rhythmically and more recently, a South African music genre known as Amapiano, a blend of house, soul and lounge music.
Closer to home, Christensen mentioned the Florida band Psychic Mirrors, whom I’d never heard of before, and the South London jazz scene and a band I have known about for a while, Kokoroko, and another I am less familiar with, Ezra Collective. He mentioned American saxophonist Kamasi Washington.
“There are a lot of amazing players around,” he said, referring to one main influence in his and Mcbaise’s style of psych. “It is really heartening to see, especially in the world of jazz. Great players are kind of a renowned thing again, whereas that wasn’t necessarily the case growing up in the 90s, with like new metal and that kind of stuff. …I don’t pretend to be able to play jazz in any competent way, but sonically it is very interesting to me.”
Jazz gets us to his latest single, “Witchcraft,” which features Angela Standberg, a friend of his and accomplished trumpet player in the French swing band Mama Shakers.
“I’ve always wanted to explore horns a little more, not being a horn player,” he said, adding he was pleased to be able to get her to work on the song.
But I wanted to know more about this song, which is very interesting to me lyrically.
While corporate communication writing is something he’s done, writing songs is newer to him.
“I am not a novelist,” he said. “I find that lyrics are really difficult to write. Sometimes that process happens rather easily. Sometimes it’s months of refining and tweaking certain words. It is not just about writing that sounds cool to sing but obviously there is a meaning where a small kernel of real life meets an imaginary concept.”
“And I swear that I saw you late last night
And I shot my best shot and traveled through time
And I had some strange lights shining in my eyes
And I can’t think why, can’t think why”
The artwork, by mcbess for the track, is of a very sexy witch, and I wondered what the song was really about.
Yes, mcbess designed this art work for Muthi’s latest single, “Witchcraft.” IMAGE COURTESY OF DIRTY MELODY RECORDS
I pressed a little, also giving him the room to tell me what to do with myself. Art is art.
“You have to leave enough space for people to have their own associations with things,” he said, before mentioning that the song was inspired by a night out at a favorite haunt. “I had a few sugary cocktails. We were on the dance floor. I saw someone who looked exactly like an old friend of mine. We weren’t romantically involved in any way.”
But the two were very close, at one point, before a falling out that had implications for both parties professionally, he said.
“I saw her right in front of me, or I kind of thought I did,” he said. “My heart just jumped into my mouth and I went into a bit of a panic. It turned out to be someone else entirely, which was a relief but sometimes those things happen and you realize that maybe you didn’t process something as well as you thought you did.”
He said while touring is out of the question right now with many of the involved musicians on these projects tied up with young children, Muthi will likely perform live this year.
That response would seem to bode well for a Mcbaise performance, as well, though that’s not something I asked. I’d love to see both of these projects perform.
“That is the plan,” he said. “I want to have a collection of new material to take out and interesting merchandise to take with me, interesting shit for people to look at. If and when that comes up, I will definitely be yelling about it.”
Once the album is released, it will be available on vinyl. The most recent pressing of Visions is sold out.
There are three retail stores for The Dudes, including the pictured store in London. PHOTO BY JAVIER SERNA/@jaminthestream
As mentioned, Christensen is marketing director for The Dudes. There are three boutique shops in London, Berlin and Lisbon. The role has allowed him to build on his previous life in communications. He’s been doing this job for a few years.
“It is great to work on something that is creatively fulfilling as that,” he said. “There is a lot of fun to be had there. It feels like a unique offering. There are loads of people doing things with clothes but not a lot of people doing it with the kind of humor and quality that we manage to do.”
“Extra Dry Blue” is a collectible toy that brought to the material world a character in the Dead Pirates’ music video “Ugo,” which was also illustrated by mcbess.
He mentioned some new stuff coming up, details of which will be announced in the coming months. “It’s not going to be your standard T-shirts, let’s put it that way.”
He and Bessudo did a comedic YouTube series called “Morning Coffee with mcbess,” that ran about a year ago.
“We have it in mind to do a second season,” he said. “It was fun to mess about. I think there is something cool about trying to ad lib that stuff and being spontaneous with it. It is silly, but it works. …
“That is a pretty good barometer for us or a guide to what we end up doing. What’s fun? What’s yielding the most fun? That is usually where the treasure is. We just sort of follow that until that vein ends for whatever reason. So that is our guide, I suppose.”
Muthi’s Matt Christensen is set to put out a new LP this year. PHOTO PROVIDED BY DIRTY MELODY RECORDS