Matthew Tavares
Introspective piano and hazy electronics that feel like a memory fading. Sophisticated jazz sensibilities dissolved into beautiful, murky ambient soundscapes.
Introspective piano and hazy electronics that feel like a memory fading. Sophisticated jazz sensibilities dissolved into beautiful, murky ambient soundscapes.
Matthew Tavares creates music that sounds like the quiet moments between major life events. It is deeply rooted in the improvisational language of jazz, but it is presented through a lens of modern isolation and digital decay. The piano is often the emotional anchor, played with a touch that feels both fragile and deliberate, surrounded by a fog of analog hiss and drifting synthesizers.
What sets him apart is his ability to strip away the flashiness of his technical background to find something more primal and textural. While his work with BADBADNOTGOOD was defined by rhythmic interplay and high-energy fusion, his solo output is a study in stillness. He uses the studio as an instrument, treating sound as if it were a physical object that can be weathered, blurred, or left to gather dust.
Start with the album January 12th for a masterclass in how jazz harmony can be repurposed for ambient listening. It is an ideal entry point for anyone who loves the intellectual depth of post-bop but wants the immersive, ego-less experience of a late-night electronic record.
Matthew Adam Tavares (born September 15, 1990), also known as Matty, is a Canadian musician, songwriter, and music producer. He is best known as a founder of the instrumental group BADBADNOTGOOD, with whom he released five studio albums and produced with for other artists. Tavares released his first solo album in 2018 and has since released a series of solo and collaborative genre-spanning albums. As a songwriter, he has helped pen songs for the likes of Post Malone, Rosalía, Camilla Cabello, Kendrick Lamar, and Kali Uchis, and often works with producer Frank Dukes.
Shares contemplative, modern classical, tape saturation, field recordings (signature)
Shares nu jazz, modern classical, field recordings, ambient techno (signature)
Shares contemplative, nu jazz, modern classical, upright bass (signature)
Shares contemplative, nu jazz, avant-garde jazz, field recordings (signature)
Shares submerged rhodes chords, nu jazz, tape saturation, upright bass (detail)
Shares nu jazz, modern classical, tape saturation, field recordings (signature)
Shares avant-garde jazz, nu jazz, ambient techno, instrumental only (subgenre)
Cassette uses generative AI to enrich its catalog. How we use AI →
