INTERVIEW: Mat Cant

CANT SAY resident and general legend MAT CANT is a veteran of the Melbourne clubscape, having helped establish the highly influential SCATTERMUSIC blog & label as well as touring with and supporting some of the biggest domestic and international acts throughout Australia.

MAT has just released a collaborative single titled 'Slow' featuring vocal contributions of 'Steph Hannah' so we thought we'd interview him and see what he's been up to recently.

So as fans of Mat Cant we've seen you play loads of different shows over the years, and through that time you've displayed a whole load of versatility. What would you describe as 'the Mat Cant sound'?

I suppose anything thats bass heavy and has some movement you know, get's those hips shaking. I started out as a Hip Hop DJ years ago and then moved into club music but i've always been into heaps of different kinds of music so i suppose that shows in my versatility. Also I think if you want to be a full time working DJ in Melbourne you do really need to be versatile, its just the way it is.

In your opinion, does a DJ / producer these days have to have 'a sound' or can that be something that changes / evolves / develops?

Having a sound really helps and i guess its only something i've started to believe in the last year, hence why i've split my gigs into two different names now (Mat Cant for club music, Kanso for Hip Hop/Dancehall/anything else). Its awesome to be versatile and play a wide range of sounds but at the same time i find people don't really know what kind of DJ you are and put you in a box before even listening to you. If you ask 10 different people what music Mat Cant plays you will probably get 5 different answers, thats cool but hard to promote and push forward in the right direction.

Where did you meet Steph Hannah the vocalist on this track? Her vocal is lush!

Steph is a friend of mine from Melbourne, she used to work with my girlfriend at General Pants in the city but at the moment she's off travelling the world the lucky thing. She's a great singer-songwriter who has been performing around the country for a while now, i just wanted to do something different with her and it worked out well.

Choose one track that you would kill to have produced?

Happy Birthday song, i wonder if the producer gets royalties for that?

How many times have people asked you if you are the owner of the Cant Say club?

Hahahaha so many times, i actually can't believe that people would think that

Any plans to take your solo career overseas in the near future?

There's no doubt I would love to tour overseas but im not in any rush, it will happen when the times right so for now I'm happy doing my thing in Australia. I've got to the point where Im happy just doing the right gigs that i really enjoy now and thats it, if that means I play once a month then thats cool. Do what you love and do it right and in the end it will pay off.

Your new single ‘Slow’ has a very unique sound, what influenced you to create this down-tempo and soulful track?

I actually wrote 'Slow' like a year ago and didn't really know what to do with it, I was going to do a different project and make tracks like this that are more for the radio but in the end i just wanted to get it out. It started to feel like a bit of an anchor on my so i'm glad its release now and really happy with the response so far. I suppose influence for the track come from all over, i would say i was listening to a lot of SBTRKT at the time hahaha.

Where can we find you spinning tracks at the moment?

At the moment you can catch me every saturday night at The Late Show and twice a month at Cant Say, also playing a heap of other shows under my "Kanso" name here and there.

When you first started to DJ, what genre of music were you most drawn to and why?

When i first started all i played was hip hop, i came from a rock background so i didn't really like dance music at all but after awhile i came around. 

What can we expect from you and Scattermusic in terms of releases in the future?

We have quite a few releases in the works at the moment, a remix release for Slow will be out end of june, a ugandan dancehall release from Melbourne artist SK Simeon, club release from Whatson Watts plus a few more i wont mention. Look out for a couple of compilations from us too, one will be a collection of Melbourne producers to showcase the city and another to celebrate 5 years of Scattermusic this year in October/November. It should be a good year.