Matt-Felix blends nostalgia and the new

“I’ve been in London for four years and a bit” says Matt-Felix as he puts down his too-hot-to-handle coffee and takes the lid off. “I’m just going to let that cool.” From what I’ve heard and read about Matt-Felix, there’s quite a bit of cultural lore. French mum, English dad, raised in Bali first, then the UK. But from what I can tell, he’s one die-hard, classic soft-rock, David-Bowie-British type through and through. No matter how long or how little he’s lived in London, his musical education — the thing that has perhaps shaped him the most — is classic Brit. “I fell in love with England, and had ‘I want to be English’ island boy dreams growing up in Bali,” he says. “Thirteen years was enough for me there. I just had to move here.” I ask if it was difficult convincing his parents to move him to England as a teenager — was there a powerpoint presentation involved? Begging? Pleading? “No, it was surprisingly easy!” is his response. “My auntie lived in England, and my mum wanted to move back to France anyway, which was quite close.” 

Whether due to a geographical switch-up or not, Matt has the cool kind of swagger of someone from days of British rock gone by. Shaggy hair swept forward, Gallagher-worthy eyebrows and a covetable sense of style inherited from his grandmother — or rather from her vintage clothing store in Marseille. Black pinstripe slacks and a cowhide messenger bag, faded with a few generations of wear. Sonically, though, Matt is more avant-garde. He may be managed by Oasis’ manager Marcus Russell, and love listening (primarily) to the greats, but he’s strikingly different to those who came before. His music is a brooding, soaring rock — gentle but texturally gritty. His recent release “Change” was born from “having had a kind of shit day” and turning it into a powerful piece best played live. Today, he releases his newest track “Cold with Desire”, which Matt describes as a kind of “musical experiment”.

Camille Bavera: Start us with your musical journey.

Matt-Felix: I started playing guitar at age ten? I got a little acoustic guitar for my birthday and just started playing, teaching myself. I fell in love with music around the age of twelve and have been writing songs every day since then.

CB: Every day?

MF: Yeah, pretty much. And then I moved here aged thirteen, joined a few bands, went to music college, did all the ‘normal’ stuff.

CB: Always the frontman?

MF: Yeah — well, I wrote the songs.

CB: And your music — is it rooted in your multicultural heritage?

MF: I don’t really think about it too much. It’s probably quite British — people say it’s quite British — because those are my main influences. But there must be something else there. It doesn’t sound Balinese that’s for sure. There’s no Gamelan or anything like that. Often when I’m writing I have a picture in my head and I can see the feeling. I then use that while I’m writing, which later  translates into the videos. So it is quite visual, but my main influences are musical. That’s what gives me fire. I listen to everyone, but I love the classics — Bowie, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave. Those are the ones I always go back to.

CB: Your last single, “Change” — you said you wrote on a bad day. Tell me about that. How are you channeling that when you’re writing?

MF: I think they call it ‘stream of consciousness’, where you let an idea go and follow it, and then afterwards you make sense of what it’s saying. It comes in different ways, but it’s usually daydreaming. So, for instance, I remember that first feeling when writing “Change” of it just being a shit day. But it doesn’t feel like that anymore. When I play it live, it’s a bit more lifting now. The band plays it faster live, and a bit punkier.

CB: Hmm, live music. What’s your crowdwork technique?

MF: [Laughs.] No, I don’t do crowdwork. Except maybe sometimes I tell a joke. When I go to gigs, I don’t really like a frontman who’s telling jokes after every song and telling you the story behind it. I like them to play and then feel like we’re here just watching them do their thing. He’s not here to entertain us. We’re entertained by them doing their thing in the moment. Also, when they’re like, this song is about my gardener’s girlfriend, I don’t really care. Plus, now you’ve ruined the song for me because you’ve told me what you think it’s about, but it might mean something completely else to me, something completely different. That’s the beauty of music — we get different feelings from it, and if someone’s telling you, this is what this is about, it kind of ruins it.

CB: You’re managed by Marcus Russell, who’s perhaps most well known for his work with Oasis. Has he ever said that you have perfect Gallagher eyebrows?

MF: He’s never mentioned it! But it’s funny, because I get it all the time. Lennon specifically. I work at an Italian restaurant and the amount of people who come in and go, oh you look like Lennon. I think about changing my hair sometimes… But Marcus is a sweetheart who loves music, and is a very smart, gentle, caring man that I’m lucky to have by my side. On my side? In my corner.

CB: And how did you find each other?

MF: By email. There was this website where you can get any music manager’s email. It’s a subscription and you just pay twenty-five quid. It says, do not send demos or we’ll kick you off. And I said, right, well I’ll just get all the emails and then you can kick me off. I got all the emails from managers of artists I could think of, sent loads of emails out and five came back who were interested. Marcus was one of them. I also got a reply from The Killers’ manager who just replied with this, [Matt does a rock on gesture], saying, awesome. And I just said, cheers man, thank you. 

CB: Now tell me about your new song “Cold with Desire”, which is great, by the way. Are you trying something new with this one?

MF: I remember reading about this thing where you would write without an instrument. You were supposed to just sit there and make an a cappella melody, which feels kind of alien to me because I’m always starting with a guitar or piano. I sat there for an hour trying to make a song, a cappella, and that’s what came out. I had the verse and chorus, and then went down to produce it in my little home studio. The finished product, I think, is pretty much the same from that day. 

CB: Where do you see yourself going from here? 

MF: Doing as many gigs as we can, supporting slots, playing around Europe. Keeping on releasing music. Our plan is to release new music every six to eight weeks, but, you know, once we get the funding, doing an album would be great.

CB: Do you have enough material in your back pocket for an album?

MF: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Listen to “Cold with Desire” from 16 May, and catch his next live show on 5 June at The Elephant’s Head, Camden.