John Matthias - Stories From The water Cooler

Co-produced by Coldcut, ‘Stories From the Watercooler’ is getting plenty of love from the alternative folk scene, with fans including Thom Yorke and Lightspeed Champion.
‘Stories From the Watercooler’ is a suite of twelve short stories rendered in classic folk-rock song form. But within this seemingly simple formula John writes about everything from the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, to fake alternative therapies, credit ratings and telephone banking, from boxing to Japanese internment camps in California and bombs with the face of Britney Spears painted on.
First there’s a choice of instrumentation that includes harmoniums, banjos, clarinets and mono synths. Then there’s the layers of electronic complexity added by his own experimental devices and the work of Coldcut, who produced the album. Last but not least there is Matthias’ voice – deadpan, up-close and all the more emotional for the lack of histrionics.
None of this should be surprising. You only have to look at the list of artists Matthias has collaborated with to expect him to combine the cerebral with real feeling. The artwork for ‘Stories…’ is provided by Stanley Donwood, best known for his record covers for Thom Yorke, the three of them having been contemporaries at Exeter University. Thom and John played in a band together during their student days and the latter added violin to ‘The Bends’. Matthias went on to work with the maverick Matthew Herbert and released his debut album, ‘Smalltown Shining’ on Herbert’s Accidental Records. He also featured on Coldcut’s last album, ‘Sound Mirrors’, from which his contribution, ‘Man In A Garage’ was one of the lead singles. In addition, he is a member of the Interdisciplinary Centre For Computer Music Research at Plymouth University, having developed ‘The Brain’, a form of artificial intelligence which he uses to programme and create his drum sounds.

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