7th February 2020: Announcing the May 29 release ‘Imagined Sky’ from guitarist & songwriter Matt Gold
We’re delighted to announce the signing of guitarist and songwriter Matt Gold to Whirlwind, his album drops May 29th and will be available as CD / DL / 180 gram LP
Imagined Sky is the first solo record from Chicago-based guitarist and songwriter Matt Gold. An incredibly in-demand instrumentalist and collaborator, Gold is best known for his work recording and touring worldwide with genre-defying artists including Makaya McCraven, Greg Ward, Sara Serpa, and Jamila Woods. With a penchant for precise melody and finely-tuned song structures, Gold’s music takes root in the spaces between instrumental improvisation, abstracted Americana, and whispering electronic textures; Imagined Sky finds a home through connecting Gold’s musical dialects into a cohesive whole.
Three tracks include vocalists – ‘Queen Anne’ features Macie Stewart (Ohmme); ‘Petrichor’ features Sara Serpa (John Zorn, Serpa/Matos), and Gold sings on ‘Dvorak/Truehearted’. Yet the other six pieces feel almost as if they have words – in fact, Gold sees his guitar here as another ‘singer’. Whether edging towards power-trio antics (with electric bassist Bryan Doherty and drummer Jeremy Cunningham) or embracing the stark intimacy of the acoustic guitar, Gold eschews a solo-driven approach and instead constructs deliberate textures around his melodies, using the instrumental tracks as places to still tell stories, to paint vivid sonic landscapes.
Gold previously released four albums with the duo Sun Speak (with drummer Nate Friedman), as well as a singer-songwriter album under the name Storm Jameson (with guitarist/vocalist Jim Tashjian). Between these releases and his ongoing collaborations with some of Chicago’s most innovative artists, Imagined Sky feels less like a debut and more like a culmination – an arrival point for a musician who has already quietly woven his voice into the fabric of Chicago’s many musical communities.
Matt Gold is a guitarist and composer based in Chicago whose work draws from diverse traditions of electric and acoustic music. He has performed in venues across North America, Europe, and Asia, and as a composer, has written music for films and for his own ensembles. Gold’s trio, which comprises electric bassist Bryan Doherty and drummer Jeremy Cunningham, synthesizes elements of folk and experimental music to create wide-reaching sonic atmospheres that surround Gold’s clear, deliberate melodies. Gold also coleads the instrumental duo Sun Speak and the singer/songwriter duo Storm Jameson. As a guitarist and collaborator, he performs and records with artists including Makaya McCraven, Greg Ward, Sara Serpa, Hood Smoke, and Jamila Woods. He cocurates the Flood Music concert series and record label.