Photo - Peter Ashworth

Big Matt’s Used Records

Ian Pye - Melody Maker - May 1982

Matt Johnson knew hell was a mistake in judgement - he just knew he couldn’t avoid it. For reasons unknown he was condemned to skirt the abyss and wrestle with a cruel crisis which could never be solved.

Adolescent bedroom angst seemed like a party compared to this torturous misery. No sleep, no body cramps, a threatening sense of futility.... “I find it hard to come alive,” he wrote to anyone who would listen, “when I’m hollowed out from the inside.”

That line eventually drifted into a song, Time (Again) For The Golden Sunset, and the so äng became part of a collection and as Matt patently had no particular place to go the whole experience was encapsulated forever on an album called Burning Blue Soul.

On this he explored the joys of melancholy with a nakedness that could have only been equalled by John Lennon on a gigantic existential downer. And although you may be thinking that this is yet another chapter from Being and Nothingness, complete with mind-shattering profoundities - life as a meaningless comma in the sentence of time - you harbour those doubts in a rock of bad faith.

Beyond the teenage torpor that fills long grey macs and glamourless indie records is the real thing and Matt Johnson is so real you dont know whether to laugh or cry. See, he knows his music is close to an open wound but he can still chuckle at himself when he sings “100,000 people today were burned/I felt a pang of concern/What are we waiting for..../...A message from the Pope?/I ½ think he got shot AS WELL!!”

Burning Blue Soul was released at the end of last year on 4AD and almost universally ignored. Astoundingly, because Ralph Steadman (the well known illustrator of wierd and dubious events) declared it to be one of his all time faves, the powers that be have decided to re-issue Matts masterpiece on this sleight bubble of publicity.

Its just not good enough, though. A record as crucial as this needs pushing if its going to surface through the slurry of popular product. The brilliant Thomas Leer, his only contemporary in new age electronics, suffered a similar fate in the uncommitted but well intentioned hands of Cherry Red. As a result both have made devastating records and been rewarded with cult credibility and sales that ensure only a bountiful future of baked beans on toast. At least Ralph Steadman got it right, because Burning Blue Soul is a bona fide 22 carat desert island disc. It begins Ÿwith a near classical storm of sound on Red Cinders In The Sand, establishes a vast breadth of range and vision and pulls this big picture into side one’s salvation, Icing Up. As a song that begins with bulging droplets of electronic rain which slowly beat out the rhythm of welcome relief at the end of a harrowing journey. Side two is no less impressive, opening on the uplifting ‘(Like A) Sun Rising Through My Garden’ and finishing on one of his best pieces, the delirious Another Boy Drowning which passionately aches with a worldly resignation and ends with a defiant discharge of bottled up tension. It wouldnt be going over the top to say this record stands altogether alone.

But it can’t have escaped your notice that the self important drama of pop is drenched in casual hyperbole, so when it comes to describing something of genuine quality theres barely anything left to reach for. You certainly can’t expect the man himself to sing his own praises. A mo ‹re modest and likeable young dreamer would be hard to find. By fusing the tradition of literary songwriting with a far reaching feel for 21st Century electronic wizardry, Matt Johnson is playing Jim Kirk to Thomas Leer’s Spock. Where the latter is menthol cool, Matt comes on all hot and emotional; burning soul indeed. Most significantly, both, like Germanys DAF, have understood the implications and possibilities of the modern synth, its power and its glory. And to top it all both play every instrument themselves.

Maybe Matt Johnson is so refreshingly down to earth because he knows that not even Jim Kirk can beam himself out of an anxiety attack. With a crew cut and tatty denims he looks like he just walked off a building site and not his second home, the recording studio. An outwardly chirpy Londoner, he says his Mum and Dad who run a pub, wanted him to be a cook, “but as I’d always been in groups since I was 11, I knew I had to do something in music. So ÷I bought this book by Tony Hatch called So You Want To Work In The Music Business. It said that if you wanted to be a recording engineer you could first work as a tea boy. I looked in the index and applied to all the studios. De-Wolfe in Wardour Street were the only ones to reply so I went up there and got the job!

“I started as the tea boy but I made such terrible tea that they promoted me. By then all me mates had become electricians or greengrocers. I used to get £18 a week, £10 went on travel and £5 to me Mum so you can see I had it tough when I was little!”

After meeting a few people “who got me into older groups like the Velvet Underground” he started messing about in the studio in a misguided attempt at becoming the next Throbbing Gristle. “I thought I was being very arty you know, very meaningful.”

In the wake of a couple of non-starter groups he formed the confusingly named The The, not a well known typing error but a loose collection of Hfriends and associates. “See, I always thought that people seem to be put off by the idea of a solo artist. They seem to prefer a group identity so I invented the name The The even though it’s really only me most of the time.”

The The released a single on 4AD and a single on Some Bizarre as well as a song on their sampler and similar contributions for Cherry Red.

Didn’t he think such diverse projects would diffuse his energies and widen the focus just when it needed narrowing down? “Well, yeah, actually I think that’s a good point and in future I’ll probably concentrate on Matt Johnson. I’m still not sure about the name though. Somebody once said it sounds like a cross between a cowboy and a car salesman! Can’t you see it, Big Matts Cars!”

To date, Burning Blue Soul has sold around 3,000 copies, a paltry amou …nt, absurdly out of balance with the records worth. Its relative commercial failure has at least taught Matt one or two lessons about the vagaries of the pop process.

“Some of the reviews were encouraging to a degree, he says, but I never really got behind it and did any gigs or promotion. Mind you, neither did 4AD really.

“I suppose I was naive enough to think that because the album was there and because it was a good one, it would do something but of course things don’t work like that do they.”

Rather than getting bitter about the records obscurity, he sees the whole experience as a form of apprenticeship. ”I reckon I’ve done my time being the boy, y’know, the trainee, ‘cos thats what its like on an independent to some extent.

“It’s all very well and idealistic - you do what you want and have a free say - you do what you want as long as you don’t spend any money. That’s the kind of philosophy involved. These outfits sit on things € whether they’re brilliant or not. Quite honestly it makes me sick.”

Talking of which, has he recovered from the dip he took when he made ‘Soul’? “Well, last year when I did that album I was nearly suicidal most of time and I suppose I’m a depressive basically, I get that a lot. My life’s always been downs and ups, but when I feel really depressed it’s my most creative period. At least I can turn something like that to my advantage and create something though, a lot of people can’t.

Grey, earnest apocalypse merchants is one thing Matt can’t stand so don’t drop him in that black hole. Where exactly he does fall is hard to say, though. “I’ve been lurking between electronic things and songs really,” he muses. “I love contrasts and that’s what I was after on the album.”

His next moves include a single - “I’ll try and make it a bit more accessible maybe” and a joint single with Soft Cell’s Marc Almond. Despite his roller-coaster psyche he appears resilien t and irrepressibly confident, dismissing most of the opposition.

“Lets face it, OMD songs could have been done by Adam Faith. A lot of the new electronic groups have just substituted the electric guitar for a synth. They haven’t really made any headway at all.

“I realise now that I want to be successful. I was green enough before to think that it didn’t matter. But to bring what I do to people’s attention is my definition of success. I want people to hear my music. I won’t compromise and I think any changes have been natural, not forced. Besides, I’m so broke its disgusting!”

As he says on Another Boy Drowning: “I wanted to be like Bob Dylan, until I discovered Moses.” Let Matt Johnson lead you out of the wilderness and pray for his next depression!