Matt Clark

Matt Clark is a guitarist/composer from Brighton, England. His career has spanned 35 years, encompassing genres as broad as jazz and blues, alternative, experimental and electronic music.

The past year of COVID and lockdown has been both testing and inspiring. Lack of live music and in-person collaboration has meant re-thinking musical output.

Matt is currently working under the moniker Matt Clark Three: “Jazz influenced grooves. Mostly instrumental. Combining a love of lo-fi loops and samples, avant-garde jazz and influenced by the contemporary jazz scenes of New York and Chicago…”

Originally conceived as a solo project, Matt is about to release a new album “One From Brooklyn” which, whilst primarily a solo effort, also includes collaborations with bassist Mark Wilson (Caaw, Underhound) and drummer Darren Beckett (Madeleine Peyroux, Lauren Hill)

“The overall effect creates a dynamic sonic quality, as if a laid-back street-level musical trio were performing their own structured and improvised material but also incorporating the ephemeral swell of sounds around them…” - Jordan Penney on AllAboutJazz.com

Matt began by playing bass guitar in school band Southern Tongue Business in the late 1980s, and played in various bands during his teens in and around the Midlands. In the early ‘90s he moved to Leicester, England to study Fine Art, where he formed the psychedelic rock band Cardboard:

“One of Leicester’s “best kept secrets” of the mid-1990’s, Cardboard were the most authentically psychedelic, trippy and eccentric of bands around…” - Alan Freeman, Ultima Thule Records.

Matt’s next incarnation was the electronic solo outfit The Electric Orange, which garnered record company interest following an “NME presents” gig at The Astoria in London.

Following a 10 year hiatus, losing himself somewhere in Eastern Europe and having a family, Matt returned to England and began playing and writing again under the moniker Interstellar McCartney, a mix of delta blues, ‘60s psychedelia and electronic loops and samples.

He now lives in Brighton and has recently worked on a number of projects, including Caaw:

Caaw – A Brighton based band with a sound that might have come about if New York No Wave had spent a lost weekend in New Orleans. Add to that hints of dive bar jazz, delta blues, East European folk and the dark lure of cabaret, and you have the seductive circus fanfare that is CAAW!

“Quirky, whimsical, melodic lines in the tradition of great storytellers, French Quarter benders, trickster music, broken glass drunken poetry of lovers and thieves…” - Margaret Garrett (Mr. Airplane Man)

He has also worked as a session guitarist with local singer/songwriter Charis Cooper and folk band Serious Child.
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