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MV & EE’s Matt Valentine Talks Space Homestead, DIY Recording, the Dead and More

Your music is tough to put a label on since it explores so much ground. How did you come to discover your approach to creating music? Who were some of your biggest musical (or non musical) influences?

It’s just music…there really isn’t that much new to say. New sounds are like accents on vowels, finding and resurrecting arcane words and launching the rocket stage of the vernacular into the zeitgeist. That’s the approach.

My biggest influence is a semi abstract monumental movement, the big moment. it’s hard to distill that on a record, that’s what I mean when I say “covert jams.” A song could be 4 minutes on Space Homestead but the jam is implied…in concert it could take off. That’s the rub, is you never really know. I think that is what i live for, playing the music live, taking it with new shapes and resurrecting it…breathing new life into that fleeting moment in time. Trying to hold on to it is futile…music is so ephemeral, but yet it is forever once it hits wax or oxide or binary. A musician has to be responsible for that. That influences me and i try to keep that in perspective. Burn one for the past but Mos Def can totally dig the afterglow in the rearview mirror. Peel out and see…slow movement. I’m getting older and learning how to handle it. I guess i’m a late bloomer that way.

What realizations have you made along your musical path?

Plant life. That I’m a perennial.

What music have you been listening to lately? You’ve mentioned in the past that you are a Deadhead. If you had to pick one, what is your favorite Dead show and why?

It’s hard to cite a fave dead show, [there’s] pretty much somethin’ for me to love in all eras. I love pigpen and his dynasty with the group. One of the ones i return to often is from the Dream Bowl on 2/22/69. Way into the Aoxomoxoa period and the acoustic/electric cross pollinization. Also 12/19/73 in Tampa is totally awe-insp for the experimentation, jams and melodic expansion. Really tho’ I listen to alotta new music and under the radar private press from days gone by, the kind of stuff that “time-lag records” and “volcanic tongue” distributes is where my head is at.

How does living in Vermont influence your musical style. What is the Vermont music scene like today? Are you a fan of Phish?

It isn’t so much living in Vermont, it is living out in the woods. Erika and I, along with our dog Zuma, live out in the boondocks about 2 miles up a mountain and it helps me hear the intervals better. I think that gets into the music, or doesn’t get into the music. There is a vermont vibe and sensibility tho’ too…the maple circuit! That’s our scene, “freedom and unity.”

There are alotta musicians in the area, all kinds of styles. One of my faves are the Happy Jawbone. I miss King Tuff being around, but Ruth Garbus lays down some heavy sonics as does the Brian Wilson of Brattleboro. Oh yeah.

Haven’t gotten too deep with Phish. I dig that they covered [the Velvet Underground’s] Loaded. I use the same compressor in my set up as Trey.

What’s next for MV & EE?

We did a residency at Zebulon down in Brooklyn at the start of the new year. We played free shows, 3 sets nightly, every sunday. Acoustic, electric and beyond. we’re gonna do a follow up to our “suub duub” 8 disc set of the entire run of those concerts on our own cottage label Child Of Microtones, or C.O.M. as it is affectionately called. We have alotta great sounding tapes and soundboards so it will be a cool matrix. We have a coupla tours in July and August, the 2nd and 3rd phases of our “Spacetime Spacemind” trails and we take the Homestead on the road in the UK/europe in September where we’ll be travelling with our own “wall of sound” PA and a analog lighting rig. For sure lookin’ forward to future wave.

Peace ∞