As was started over a year ago with the release of Consciousness of Light and I continued to work on through the early pandemic lockdown, it’s all about the songs and songwriting. I’ve released a few things in that time, a new series called Dronearium (1 and 2 are out now) of mostly long-from atmospheric soundscapes – I have about ten of these that are mostly finished that I’ve worked on over the last year, as well as releasing a recording that Michael Teager and I had worked on for quite some time, Subterranean Bearings.
Through it all, through all of this crazy 2020, the songs have been a touchstone. I constantly come back to the songs. I’ve tried to create a follow-up to Ambient Guitar not less than 40 times and I have dozens of guitar-centric ambient tracks. The smart money is on an Ambient Guitar follow-up, which folks have loved and has given me no shortage of good energy inspiration, but the inspiration continues to move to the songs – Back to basics.
I’m particularly proud of this May YouTube performance, where I brought together the songs with ambient guitar in a live performance setting:
I feel like this is the future, right now, but usually no sooner than I’ve said it, the muse takes me down some other creative rabbit hole.
For the better part of this year and last, I’ve been working on a recording I’ve been calling “Within/Without” but then I found another record with that name, so now I don’t know what I’m calling it. This record is song-centric. It could be summed as songs with ambient drones and textures, like Olagra, like Consciousness of Light, but, presently, there’s only one instrumental track.
It’s been with no shortage of self-consciousness, which is likely why it’s taken me 15 years and more start/stops that I can recall, to make the songs the focal point. I’ve loved my exploration of sound and textures and raw, unbridled creativity, but I’ve also felt, at times, emotionally absent from those recordings, perhaps its the lack of ego in that music and perhaps it’s a good thing. Perhaps the songs are the ego’s way of pulling me into myself rather than focusing on a music that’s beyond myself and not about me. That’s plausible, but I have to take the journey. No shortcuts.
So, yeah, that’s where things are. I’m writing songs. I’m singing songs. I’ve called it ambient folk, drone folk and dreamt up many more marketing categories to try and relay, in a few words, what I’m trying to achieve. It just doesn’t work that way.
I hope you’ll stay with me, but I understand that, as a friend once told me as a punchline to a joke: “I’m not interested in growing with you as an artist; just play the hits.”
I’ve started this record dozens of times and each time I stalled, each time it fell to the wayside and didn’t go any further. There have been so many start/stops that I assumed this record would never get made. An attempt at this record was created under my own name from 2006, called Olagra… Originally, Olagra was an idea created in quiet room, then it was a band and then a record that had some allusion to the original ideas and some fragments of the band; but those were little more than sketches. After that Olagra was little more than a haunting sentiment floating in the aether nagging me, constantly reminding me of what could have been, maybe what should have been, but certainly, categorically what wasn’t… until it was: Winter Eyes.
Winter Eyes, is the definitive recording of songs that I was writing in 2004 and 2005, and beyond with all of the psych folk, AM 70s light rock and mellow gold that I could mine. It, simultaneously, contains allusions to all these things, while being none of those things. I can find no category to put it in. It just is. I’ve called it ‘psych folk’, but now I call it droneFolk. as good of a label as any I can find, as it’s primarily acoustic and folky, but it’s also rich, sonically, as I chose not to pursue mutually exclusive paths of acoustic conservatism or strict synthesized sonics; instead, I’ve opted to pursue both, equally, simultaneously.
That period of the mid-aughts was special for me, because after a hiatus of more than ten years focusing on sound, rather than songs, I was quite compelled to go back to songwriting, which was where I started, as a wee pup, to begin with. Once I started getting going with the songs I found that they were too personal (too precious) to commodify and bring to life as a “project” or a published recording. I couldn’t separate myself from them enough to do that with the work. Even now, I struggle with this. I think that’s why there were so many false starts. Eventually, I made peace with the “songs” as a creative path and through that catharsis realized that I was obligated to share this music out, as I had first envisioned it, but wasn’t quite able to capture, so many years before. I’ve done that now.
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
Reveries from the Cosmic Horizon – An ongoing and largely solemn practice whereby I record an unpolished, never practiced or even heard before and quickly forgotten improvised acoustic solo to a particularly moving piece of drone ambient music that’s playing in the background while I practice.
Singer/Songwriter Shaped by Americana, Meditation and the Spirit of the Grateful Dead
Matt Borghi is Michigan-based singer/songwriter whose evocative music resonates deeply with fans of the Grateful Dead and Brian Eno-alike. Growing up immersed in the rhythms Detroit and steeped in Canadian radio that drifted across the border, Matt found his inspiration early in the storytelling tradition of classic folk and the improvisational spirit of the Grateful Dead. These influences became the cornerstone of his songwriting style, blending poetic lyrics with captivating melodies that transport listeners to a place where tradition and innovation harmoniously coexist.
Matt’s journey as an artist began with a guitar in hand and a love for communal music-making but took an unconventional detour when he was struck with a rare heart condition at the age of 19. While he was on a course towards fulfilling his goals as a working singer/songwriter, his musical goals and focus changed as he was pulled towards contemplative and meditative music that aided in his recovery.
As the years passed, Matt became known for his meditative ‘ambient guitar’ music with features on NPR, BBC, CBC, Music from the Hearts of Space and Echoes with John Diliberto, as well as numerous licensing placements and dozens of record deals; his singer/songwriter work continued quietly in the shadows.
While Matt spent more than two decades working within the high-resolution production world of ambient guitar and drone-based music, he never moved away from his love of folk and Americana, specifically the Appalachian music traditions – His first guitar lesson took place on a porch during a cool fall evening, overlooking the foggy hills of his ancestral home in Van Lear, Kentucky—the hometown of Loretta Lynn—while he was visiting from Detroit.
Through it all, Matt has remained committed to his singer/songwriter work and in recent years has elevated its prominence and focus in his creative output.
Inspired by the acoustic richness of bluegrass, the heartfelt richness of Americana and the improvisational spirit of the Grateful Dead, Matt’s songs and live performances reflect both personal introspection and collective experience. His work often explores themes of wandering, belonging, and the search for meaning—echoes of the Grateful Dead’s own musical explorations.
Over the years, Matt has released dozens of albums that showcase his mastery of blending genres. Whether performing solo or collaborating with other musicians, his live shows are celebrated for their warm intimacy and improvisational flair, inviting audiences to become part of the musical journey. Matt’s dedication to authenticity and connection shines through in every performance, earning him a loyal following across folk and Americana communities.
Today, Matt Borghi continues to write, record, and perform with the same passion that first drew him to music. His work pays homage to the roots of American music while carving out a distinct voice that honors tradition and celebrates the spirit of artistic exploration.
I don’t get into talking about my creative process as much as I once did, but with this recording I want to say a few things. First off, this recording was completely improvised and recorded live yesterday, April 3rd 2026. I lost myself in it. My best ambient work, and much of the work that I share with you, is improvised. Sometimes, often actually, it’s not good and gets put in the trash, but other times, the best times, a sublime state of flow is achieved, sounds flood my brain and the world falls away – ‘Remember a time’, or as I call it on my hard drive: ‘04032026 – Guitar Improvisation’, was one such occurrence and now I’m sharing it with you.
Announcing my new ‘songs’ recording, Towards the Western Sky. It’s naked and stripped down; there are no big ambient textures or dense guitar drones supporting the melody or a voice buried somewhere in the mix, rather this recording is a folk recording, the songs taken down to their most basic essence: Guitar and voice. Get it here on Bandcamp for free/name your price.
I’ve recorded and released some of these songs before, but I had always wanted to do stripped down ‘folk’ versions of the tunes. Until now, and probably now, too, I’ve lacked the confidence to put these songs out there in that way, whether as the singer or the songwriter, probably both, I hid behind big production burying the tunes.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered, this is a very different recording, one that I’ve tried to record a hundred times over the course of the last twenty years, beginning around 2003. Hell, if I’m honest, I began making this recording with my first recording session and my first studio-recorded song in 1994, but I wasn’t very good and the song wasn’t very good either, but it was a start and through ten thousand start-stops, a lifetime, here I am releasing a recording that serves as a snapshot of my songwriting work, a collection that’s well into the hundreds at this point.
Folk songs are known for covering some dark territory, the yearning of the human spirit, the struggle of the human condition and everything in between. I’ve alluded to these subjects in abstract and poetic longform titles, but here they’re delivered by me without pretense and with a rawness that oftentimes has been too precious to for me to share; there’s a darkness, always just beyond on the edges – with these recordings, I try to tame it.
There are light moments in this recording, too, because after all, life is a balance and I’ve tried to embody that balance in this recording. To be sure, this isn’t an ambient or a drone recording, some of the songs on ‘Toward the Western Sky’ are thirty years old and some, barely thirty days old, but they all have something about them that begged inclusion in this humble collection of songs from a middle-aged Michigan songwriter fumbling towards self-actualization through song and story. Again, you can get it here on Bandcamp for free/name your price.
I hope you enjoy it!
-Matt
Mini bio –
Matt Borghi is a Michigan-based singer/songwriter fumbling towards self-actualization through sound, story and song. Matt is also a founding member of The Deadly String Band, an East Lansing-based Grateful Dead and Dead-adjacent cover band who approach the the music as an acoustic old time string band covering the whole of the Grateful Dead’s song catalog as well as their influences, including tunes from the old time blues, folk and bluegrass songbook.
Matt Borghi creates music at the meeting point of song, soundscape, and improvisation. Spanning intimate acoustic songs, expansive guitar soundscapes, and longform instrumental works, his recordings share a common purpose: An invitation to deep listening with space to slow down and reconnect with the experiences— both internal and external — that shape our lives.
