I been here for years

In spring 1997 Mathew Chicoine aka Recloose made contact with 2nd wave Detroit Techno scion Carl Craig by way of a now legendary “Demo on Rye Sandwich”. The meeting might have gone a little like this:

Carl Craig “Achtung brethren – gimme some of those extended building intros with the promise of some sort of ethnic style breakdown before you pile in a beat down kinda rhythm yo… oh and stick some pastrami and lachs on the side as well man.”

Matt Chicoine “Certainly Sir”
Putting the
Sarnie together

Carl Craig “…Nice…”

After some time…

Matt Chicoine “You want mayo with DAT?”

Carl Craig “Forget that isht – do I look Belgian to you?”

Ok, so obviously the story didn’t quite go like that but it’s not the most interesting thing about Recloose. In terms of underground dance music he has seen a lot of success in a relatively short time: this is not to say that he hasn’t paid his dues though. His musical roots trace back through eight years of studying music and playing jazz at Ann Arbor University, later shifting his focus to djing. His eclectic sets, which were first heard on college radio, have led to a prolific career playing at festivals and clubs around the world. He has cited the early Jeff Mills AKA The Wizard AKA The Wiz mixes on WKLB Radio as a direct inspiration for getting up on to the ones and twos while artists as diverse as the flamboyant Rick James and the seminal Herbie Hancock have shaped his interpretation of electronic music.

Since serving Carl Craig with the best sounding/worst tasting sandwich in Detroit, Recloose has progressed to holding an enviable place in Detroit’s musical canon. A musical style which although has been likened to representing the continually morphing cityscapes and sonic environs of industrial Detroit, his early sound is too simply defined by such a cliché. He touches base with his forefathers through jazz and takes this compositional flare and uncompromising love of music to produce jittering and funky strains of musical DNA. His talent is in arranging sound not so much as in appropriating its found qualities like his contemporary Theo Parrish.


Recloose - Get There Tonight from Cardiology

An invitation to take part in the Wellington International Jazz Festival in 2000 led to him falling in love with the people and country of New Zealand itself. Eventually marrying and fathering a family near Wellington on the Kapiti Coast. Recloose, the Kiwi by proxy, started relocation shortly after the release of his first album Cardiology. It was a move that invited some comment but however proved to be the right decision for him. It has been the impetus to develop a radically different sound and provide new musical challenges.

Now residing in the beach town of Titahi Bay in NZ with the vibrant musical scene of Wellington nearby, the pieces were in place for the production of his second album “Hiatus on the Horizon”. By teaming up with Wellington musicians like Riki Gooch aka Eru Dangerspiel formerly of Trinity Roots and Lisa Tomlins vocalist for Rhombus the man has built around him a formidable live band as well as locking it down for Wellingtons heaviest crowd every Friday at Metterhorn. The Album, on record label Peacefrog, was described by them as “…encompassing live instrumentation, soul fuelled vocals and featuring many of Wellington’s established and rising musicians… an unlikely musical fusion of the sounds of the South Pacific and the not so distant memories of the Motor City…” Certainly with bravura as accomplished as the track “Dust” featuring Fat Freddys Drop vocalist Joe Dukie the labels tendency toward hyperbole is not with out foundation.



Recloose Live Band - Dust from Hiatus on the Horizon

I met up with the man Recloose and his 7-piece funk band on a chilly morning in Glasgow in 2006 a few hours before he embarked on his European tour. Since than a new album “Perfect Timing” has been recently released and while a DJ tour has taken place (with stops at the Southport Weekender amongst other prestigious gigs) a return of the live band is greatly anticipated. On that morning I found a man missing easy cheese and burritos whilst reminiscing about his homeland, the States. He was about to settle into a veggie burger served by the hardest looking Russian waiter in town…

“You want sauce?” Says the waiter.

Recloose, “Yeah, please, ketchup.”

He’s a polite guy and excuses himself for speaking with his mouth full. I ask him if he smokes in that hope that I may but I find Matt is a reformed smoker, “and this time it’s gonna stick, I tried when I was 25, I tried when I was 30 but this year (2006)… I just had my 31st birthday …” Perhaps hopeful when considering the miles he’s about to chock up with his band. Still with good humour abounding all is in place for a voyage befitting of any Kesey or Kerouac yarn, smoking or non-smoking.

A lot of people have tried to put a tag on what you do, what’s your take on it?

I guess I try not to get too wrapped up in any one sound at any time and avoid the usual pitfalls of bandwagons. In music it’s dangerous to pigeonhole yourself and so I’ve always been reluctant to put a label on what kind of music I make. When people ask me I just shrug myself and say, “I don’t really know.”

I guess it’s like Duke Ellington said: “There’s only two types of music – good and bad.”

Yeah totally, I hope I make good music!

Well whatever it is – it’s definitely not shit!

(Laughing out loud) Cheers bro. I guess that’s the main thing, not to be too wrapped up in your own world and keep a bit of distance between what you do and how you feel about it.

“Dust” has been a massive track for you – can you put your finger on why it’s worked so well on the dance floors and in the market place?

I guess when the like of Gilles Peterson picks something up and gives it airplay that really helps. It’s funny we were just talking about this last night. I t comes down to finding a balance between being creative, being artistic, being true to what you do and at the same time earning a lot of money. So it’s a fine line, a tightrope walk. Being able to make music that’s interesting, creative and breaking some new ground but at the same time not alienating any of the audience is a challenge. Dust was a little different but it incorporates some familiar elements… house, soul… The vocal Joe (Dukie) laid down was golden.

Were you aware of Joe and the band Fat Freddys Drop before you moved to Wellington in 2001?

Just a little bit, somebody gave me a CD when I first came to Wellington. Freddys are the kind of band that just plays ALL the time, so I became really aware of them on the live scene.

I was reading in your sleeve notes for “Hiatus on the Horizon” that you considered the album to be very much a community thing – I take it that community was something you were aware of before moving from Detroit?

Not at all, I wasn’t. I was pretty oblivious to what was going on there musically. It was then and is now, even more so, bubbling away developing underneath most people’s conscience. There’s some real heat coming through. All the components are there. There are some great musicians. It’s all starting to gel now with Freddys, The Black Seeds, in fact, Mark the guitar player in my band is from The Black Seeds. Everyone who is in the band is in other bands and that’s the cool thing. Lisa Tomlins (vocalist) is in like forty (!!!) other bands back in NZ, She sings with Rhombus amongst others, Freddys as well. I’ve got the Kiwi All-Stars with me! Isaac Aesili is with a couple of hot bands to look out for – Opensouls and Solaa – and Riki Gooch my percussionist was 1/3 of Trinity Roots. All hot kiwi bands.

So I take it the current Album was always intended to be experienced as a live event.

Um, not really, it just kinda happened. I wish I was one of these guys with a 5-year plan but it happened through listening back and really just trying to understand it as a performance. Perhaps it had a bit to do with being bored of twelve years of Djing. I mean playing in a band is so much fun… well it’s also a fucking pain in the ass!!! (Band mates chortling in the background) No let me re-define this. (Sarcastically) IT’S AN UTTER PAIN IN THE ASS… I mean touring man, we’ve been on the road for one day and I’m like, “what the fuck have I let myself in for?!?!?” You’ve met my band-mates right? What a rag-tag bunch of kiwi miscreants and party freaks. (Smiling and loud belly laughs erupt from the group) That said it’s a lot of fun – to be on stage is so much more gratifying than playing records. The chemistry with in the band and with the audience is awesome.


Recloose - Mana's Bounce from Hiatus on the Horizon

That really comes through when you are on stage. “Hiatus” presents quite a departure from your previous album Cardiology. Did you change your approach dramatically to build that sound?

I still use Logic as my core program so I didn’t change my approach that much. I suppose it had to do with being in New Zealand. Having a different set of sounds and influences and the change in the visual environment is just different. That coupled with having my son – both those things lightened me up quite a bit. You know Detroit is quite a dark and heavy place and you listen to that music (Cardiology) and you understand how it was made there. You can’t really make that kind of music being in NZ, I mean, a lot of people do but it always comes out sounding empty because you don’t have that frame of reference. Where as music that has that lighter feel to it, well, a more acoustically driven instrumentation inevitably captures the soul of this place. It can still be heavy like when the horns come through but that’s really what is happening here in NZ. The countryside has a lot more substance, a lot more soul, people go to the city to find themselves but the soul that’s there is what people have already brought with them. At some point in time everyone was a country bum, not literally but certainly for the majority of us if we go back to our roots.

So when you hand over a track for remixing is there ever a pang shooting through you?

There’s always a risk when you ask people to remix stuff that they’ll mess it up or lose the core of what it’s about but in the end it’s you that asked them to do the remix and you’ve trusted them to do it and you’ve taken that chance. That’s just the nature of the music business.

Do you enjoy doing remix work yourself?

Yeah I like remixes, they’re fun. I think for me they can be a bit of a distraction because I’ve done so many. Sometimes I wish I’d spent more time working on my own stuff but the thing with remixes is that they are a LOT of fun. You can do them relatively quickly and they constitute, for a lot of artists, our bread and butter.

And finally, what would be your ultimate after party?

Sweet man, well I would love to get my Detroit crew and my Wellington crew together and just mess around, party it up, jam and do it like a good old fashioned house party. I’d get my man Carl Craig across, Theo (Parrish) would be down, John Arnold, Jeremy Ellis, Lisa Tomlins on the mic, Amp Fiddler would be up there, Moodymann would be there and all the Fat Freddys boys… yeah that would be insane.


The new album is due out soon in the UK and is already released down under - by the sounds of it we're getting more high quality musicianship and heavy dance floor pressure. Be sure to cop this.

Recloose Homeboi page
Mixes, mp3's and more

And here's a treat for all you fans of bumpin' fidgety house:
Recloose - Dust (Induceve Mix)