I’ve been quite inspired with the songwriting aspect of my work for the last couple weeks. Towards a Western Sky, while a bit of a sleeper amongst my soundscape work, was a pivotal release for me in many ways, something that I’ve been reflecting on recently. 

When I started making ambient and soundscapes 30 years ago I came at things as a singer/songwriter/guitar player. As I explored soundscapes and moved to computers, synthesizers and sound processing I would often wonder: What if I could bring about these sound worlds, these portals to deep listening with a basic augmentation to my singer/songwriter guitar set up. I explored this in parallel to my soundscape work for years and pursued many experiments to try and make it work.

I got close a few times.

Mostly it never worked until one day when I realized that it wasn’t about songs and songwriting as much as it was about textures of the guitar, voice, words, rhythm, nuance, timbre and color. The sonic palette is much more rudimentary, guitar, voice, words vs. the wide stereo of synthesized soundscapes, kind of like comparing a black and white photo to a high resolution color photo; different perhaps, but the essence is the same.

As I work on the new songs, I encourage my listeners to forget about “songs”, as the pervasive ear worms that invade our thoughts or become sonic bookmarks of our lives and rather think of them as sonic vignettes on the other side of the spectrum from the longform soundscape. Each of them is an invitation to deep listening. Start here: https://mattborghi.bandcamp.com/album/toward-the-western-sky

Matt Borghi Toward the Western Sky