Some Truths Are Worth the Wait: DMVU on Soothsayer (Interview) - River Beats Dance

Some Truths Are Worth the Wait: DMVU on Soothsayer (Interview)

There is something to be said about Matthew Phillpot-Jones and how he moves through this world. It’s quiet. It’s radical. And it’s really sensory.

Better known as DMVU, the Denver-based producer has spent nearly a decade building one of the most unique ‘sounds’ in bass music, but in unorthodox ways. By ignoring trends rather than chasing them. His studio backs against a state forest on the edge of Bear Creek. His sliding glass door opens to a greenbelt stretching all the way to the mountains. Dare I say that it feels right that a man who has spent years translating the textures of his everyday life expresses them through soundscapes where the everyday and extraordinary coexist with one another?

On April 24th, at Denver’s Black Box, DMVU headlined a release show for Soothsayer, a ten-track album released across three installments, completing a trilogy that has unfolded over the previous few weeks. In my opinion, it’s his most personal body of work yet, and maybe even his most audacious. Before he took the stage, we sat down to talk about where Soothsayer came from and what it means to rediscover yourself after persevering.

Who Is DMVU?

Matt grew up in New Hampshire before landing in Denver, a move that he credits as the single biggest factor in who he became as an artist. His parents laid an exceptional music foundation: his mother had what he calls “insanely good music taste” across a plethora of genres. She was the first in the house to find Future, via a Datpiff.com mixtape, while his father played piano and accordion and steered him towards folk and traditional music.

The production side started when a runaway friend taught him to pirate software in eighth grade. Through pirating games also came pirating synthesizers. Through synthesizers, he discovered passion. He didn’t even know sample packs existed until he found a trance loop CD at Goodwill while doing community service for a graffiti charge.

That scrappy origin, doing whatever you’ve got to do to make it work, is very much still existing in how he operates. He writes, records, and even mixes everything himself. A Grammy-balloted solo artist who has released on Dome of Doom, Circus Records, and Deep Dark & Dangerous, who has, along the way, built a catalog that covers deeply introspective downtempo and what I like to call ‘dancefloor demolition.” There’s something to be sad about someone who brands themselves on that unapologetically. Soothsayer is the latest chapter, and the most personal one yet.

We sat down with Matt at The Black Box in Denver before his Soothsayer release show.

Omid Eghbal: Anything you want to say to the people before we dive in?

Matthew Phillpot-Jones: Listen to your heart. And Free Palestine

OE: So, you grew up in New Hampshire, ended up in Denver, and built something that operates pretty far outside the mainstream. Was there a paradigm shift or a moment where you knew this was actually going to be your thing?

MPJ: Not really. I just kept doing it until I was getting fired from the little jobs I was trying to keep because I kept taking too much time off to play shows. I kind of went into it without any goals. I feel like it’s one of those things where if you don’t try, it’ll work, and if you try, it won’t work. Which is very Zen and also completely unexplainable, because the second you acknowledge you’re not trying, you’re trying. But yeah, this was not part of the plan. It was a little bit of luck and a little bit of hard work.

OE: Fair to say that you believe in luck then?

MPJ: I think it’s both, but I think luck is huge. I’m very lucky that I got to grow up in Denver when I did, when bass music was what it was. After I started touring, I’d go to other parts of the country and realize in Nebraska they’d just found Zeds Dead three years ago. I had it made. If I’d grown up anywhere else, I would not be in the situation I am in

OE: Probably also fair to say things would be different if you’d stayed in New Hampshire then?

MPJ: Absolutely, I’d probably be a lobster fisherman

OE: For people just discovering your music: Soothsayer, with a record that balloted on the Grammy nomination, with Bloccd, how would you describe what you do?

MPJ: I make lots of variations of music. All of it is bass-oriented, low-end focused, percussion and drum-oriented. I clearly go all over the place, but that’s because I get bored easily. If I made one genre of music over and over, I would lose my mind. “Bass music” is not the best term, but from a technical standpoint, it summarizes it correctly.

OE: You’ve talked about how gaming and technology shaped how you got into production. Can you talk about that?

MPJ: It started in eighth or ninth grade, pirating games. A friend who ran away from home taught me how to pirate things, and through pirating games came pirating synthesizers. We’d use freeware: Audacity, the trial version of Acid, and just dick around. We asked ourselves what cool programs we steal? So it came from a place of delinquency, and it turned into love.

OE: The parallel to today’s world with artists releasing sample packs, patches.. is that a line you draw back to that era?

MPJ: There were way fewer resources when I started. I’m sure people who started before me would say the same thing about when I started. It’s just how the previous generation always feels about the next. But there wasn’t a splice or anything like that. Because of that, you had to be a little more creative. You had to take the backwards ways of doing things. I’m not shit-talking Splice, I just mean when there are fewer options, you gotta try a little harder. I also think if I’d had access to Splice when I was a young producer, I would have been less creative. My music would have sounded a lot better, though. My early music sounds so goddamn bad. I luckily had very delusional friends who were like, “This is so sick, dude, you’re killing it.” Dude was not killing it. But it gave me the confidence I needed.

OE: Both your parents were musically versed. How much did that shape you?

MPJ: My mom was very into music. She didn’t play, but she had insanely good taste, and it was super broad. She got me into Art of Noise, Enigma, and Enya. The first time I ever heard Future was when I was listening to a Datpiff mixtape when I came home from school. She listened to everything. It was not “oh, I kind of listen to everything,” she actually did. My dad played piano and accordion and got me into folk music and traditional music. Between the two of them, I built a vast repertoire in my head of different stylings, which really helped.

OE: Do you play instruments yourself?

MPJ: There’s always been a piano in my house, so if there’s a piano in your house, you’re eventually going to sit down and start hitting keys. The first instrument I seriously played was drums. My very loving and caring parents got me a pawn shop drum set in fourth grade, which is psychotic to get a fourth grader. Deep respect. I don’t know how they tolerated it.

OE: So then, when you’re making a song now, are you playing things in on MIDI or clicking and dragging in Fruity Loops?

MPJ: A lot of it is hand-played and then corrected. I can play well enough, but I like starting with something tangible I can do with my hands: little percussion things, chords, and then building off there. It’s almost like having an extra arm. You can play something and then add something on top of it.

OE: A lot of producers in bass music never played instruments; there’s something unique that comes from that, too.

MPJ: I think it’s good to know music theory, but there’s a very unique style that comes from people with no musical training. The less you know, the more you can make these weird mistakes that turn into good things. People with too much classical training can box themselves in. Someone with no background is just throwing paint at the wall, and sometimes that fucking rules. I would never tell someone not to learn music theory, but I don’t think people should feel bad if they don’t. There are no fucking rules.

OE: Let’s talk about Soothsayer. When you were working on the trilogy structure, were you trying to guide the listener toward a specific tone or theme?

MPJ: It was all written in one of those same stylistic periods, like an eight-month window. I didn’t plan it as an album. I was just writing tracks, maybe thinking a few EPs, but then it was like.. I don’t like the idea of a chill EP because you can go longer with chill things. A lot of the tracks are long, too. So I landed on releasing an album as individual EPs that make up one whole at the end. It was something I’d never done. I was like, fuck it, what can it hurt to try something new?

OE: More specifically, do you want the listener to feel a certain way?

MPJ: I mean, it’s like fantasy. Everyone, when they write art, hopes it will be received a certain way. But once you release it, it is no longer yours. People are gonna take it however they take it. In a perfect world, people would get exactly what I meant. But that’s also the beauty of music: someone’s “misunderstanding” of a song is not really a misunderstanding. It means something different to everyone, and if they find specific meaning in it, that is the meaning. Whatever they find is correct. I had intent, but that goes out the window when it hits the streaming service.

OE: What does Soothsayer mean to you personally?

MPJ: This was the first big body of music I wrote once I got sober. It’s scary. I used to write music pretty much all day, every day, then I got sober and thought my output would go crazy. Completely wrong.. ..I wrote way less music because I was essentially relearning how to be myself. I guess it’s a reflection of me trying to figure out where I fit in the scheme of things. That’s why it’s kind of disjointed. And I think that’s actually one of the reasons I felt like three parts would be better: I was still learning about myself. Still am. Always will be. It was an experiment to see who I am and how my relationship with art has changed since getting sober.

OE: Congratulations on getting sober. Can you share a bit about your history there?

MPJ: The entirety of my creative life, I don’t think I played a show sober from the age of 17 onwards. I liked drinking, I liked doing powders, I liked taking pills. At one point, I had the realization that I’d never done any of this sober. I’d spent my entire career fucked up. And I had this scary thought: do I know how to do this if I’m not fucked up? I tried quitting a few times, but didn’t take it seriously. Then, on June 15, 2024, I was at the club, went home, and I was like.. .. I cannot fucking do this anymore. I was exhausted on more than a base level. There was a deep, decade-long exhaustion from partying. It just wasn’t fun anymore, and I couldn’t enjoy myself without getting fucked up, and that was scary.

I was in an alley at 3 a.m. I had just turned 30. And I was like, ‘This didn’t feel good, man.’ My 12-year-old self would be like, “What the fuck are you doing? You’ve somehow lived out this accidental dream, and you’re just in the alley doing drugs.” I had to heal my wounded inner child, and the only way to do that was to stop being a wild man.

OE: Do you look back on music you made when you were partying differently now?

MPJ: No regrets is such a cliché, but every piece of it is a reflection of my life at that time. It’s like looking at a scrapbook. Sometimes you look back and go, damn, I was crazy then. But I don’t really regret any of it. I’m very anal about the music I release, and that hasn’t changed since I got sober. I’ll look back at stuff from 10, 11 years ago and think, this doesn’t sound very good, but that was just a skill issue. I didn’t know how to mix; I wasn’t great at sound design. That had really nothing to do with my chemical intake.

OE: There’s a tension in your career: introspective, downtempo studio output, but a live reputation for high-energy sets. How do you sit with that paradox?

MPJ: It’s tough. I really try to separate the booking: if I’m on a flyer, it’ll say what kind of set it is. This is going to be bangers. This is going to be chill. Because people will DM me at a downtempo set and ask me to play “50 Pounds.” That’s not going to fit here. I kind of put myself in a sticky situation, but at the end of the day, I’m just making what I want to make. I can go to bed and feel good about myself.

OE: Your album artwork has this stillness-in-nature quality to it. I’m looking at one with a fox. Where does that come from?

MPJ: I’m a big fan of nature. I live on the border of a state forest: my house backs up to Bear Creek. I don’t have a backyard; it’s just my studio, the sliding glass door, and then open space that goes all the way to the mountains and miles the other way. I’ve been around there my whole life. Nature is my best friend. The one thing that keeps me going.

OE: Dreams have come up in discussions about your music. Do you lucid dream? And how does that affect the creative process?

MPJ: I’ve never lucid dreamed. My dreams are really weird. They’re kind of surreal, still-image instances of life. I can’t quite explain it. I stopped smoking weed before I got sober, so about seven years ago, and the past seven years of dreams have been very weird but difficult to articulate. I try to write them down now. First thing in the morning: journal. If I have the strength to hold a pencil. But I think there’s something there. I use a lot of real-life textures in my music. I think there’s magic to be found in everyday life, and it’s hard to see sometimes. Music and art are like a drop of ink in a glass of water. It highlights currents that already exist, that the naked eye can’t see. I feel like dreams are kind of on the same plane. How? I don’t know. But it feels right.

OE: You write, record, and mix everything yourself, and lately you’ve been mastering your own records too. Is there ever a downside to that?

MPJ: Oh yeah. Some of my favorite mixdowns I’ve ever heard on my tracks were not done by me. Bob Mack, Daddy Kev: those dudes have brought out truly magical qualities in my music. A good mastering engineer adds something that is hard to explain. I don’t plan on mastering my own music forever. If it’s appropriate for the release, I’ll do it. But I’d rather go through someone I trust deeply. It’s just that chill stuff doesn’t need to be mind-numbingly loud, so the ceiling is lower, and it’s easier to do myself.

OE: With that said, do you wish you had more collaborators in that process?

MPJ: I’m bad at working with others: I have control issues, which is probably why I’m a solo artist. But there are such profound realizations to be had during collaborations. I really prefer collaborating with vocalists and instrumentalists. I have a track with Herbalistek on my upcoming EP: that’s the first collab I’ve done in a while, and it was so refreshing. There are so many creative windows that open when you’re collaborating with someone. It’s very healthy and important to the creative muscle. I also made something with Duffrey recently. He was doing a one-track-a-day thing, and we’re actually planning to finish that and make it something a little shinier.

OE: Before we let you go, where should people find Soothsayer?

MPJ: Bandcamp, always. Spotify and Apple are evil corporations. Bandcamp will always be the best place. But it’s on every streaming service. No physical release yet, but who knows what the future holds.

OE: If you were a soothsayer, you’d know

MPJ: If I were a soothsayer, I would know what the future was. But alas. Who’s to say?

Soothsayer is out now on all streaming platforms. Support DMVU directly:

Soundcloud | Bandcamp | Spotify

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