Matt Midgley Q&A

Your name: 

Matt Midgley.

Where are you from? 

Bonnie Scotland! Edinburgh to be precise. Though I'm currently based in Oxfordshire.

How would you describe yourself? 

A semi-professional drinker with a music problem. Amongst other things I like beards, late nights, and Ghibli films. I'm a singer and acoustic guitarist. I play my guitar like a drum.

Who are your main influences musically? 

I take influence from more or less everything I like listening to. On one hand, I'm fond of a lot of artists you'd expect on hearing my songs; Nick Drake, Bright Eyes, Frightened Rabbit, Jon Gomm... On the other there's everything from Tool to Radiohead, Pantera to Blink 182, and Pogo to Patrick Wolf. 

What do you hope to achieve in music? 

I just want to write songs that are important or special to me, put them out there - live, recorded, whatever - and hope to see them affect people in a positive way. I guess I'm already achieving that to some extent, but there's always another song and another audience.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why? 

I played a run of shows in Austria this summer with Walk The Walls. Vienna was just nuts; I don't think I've ever been so well recieved at a gig. After that I went to a guitar workshop in the Alps run by Thomas Leeb - a hero of percussive guitar - and soaked up some of the most inspiring musicianship from players from across world. And drank incredibly heavily. Natch. A life-changing fortnight.

And what’s the moment you want to forget? 

I know it's a cop-out answer, but nothing. You're shaped by every experience, good or bad, and you learn and progress. I wouldn't be the musician or the person that I am today if not for what happened yesterday.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why? 

Carrier Wave. It's a song that kind of wrote itself. I sat down with my guitar, played the first two pairs of harmonics, and about eight minutes later it was finished. That's really abnormal for me. Even more abnormal is that I still really like it; I go through phases of love/hate with my own music, but this song remains something I'm really proud of and it continues to reverberate. It's about my best pal, Rara.  

Where can we listen to it? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEZSVPbMWiQ

Where can we find out more about your music?

My website: www.mattmidgley.co.uk

My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MattMidgleyMusic

My Twitter: @matt_midgley
My Bandcamp: http://mattmidgley.bandcamp.com/

Anything else you’d like to say about your music that I forgot to ask? 
I aim to gig as much as possible. If you're reading this and you like what you hear, give me shout via one of the sites above - I'll do whatever I can to book a show near you!