Matthew and the Atlas

• Singer/Songwriter

When it came time for fifth full-length ‘Many Times,’ Matt Hegarty needed to try something different. The Aldershot songwriter, better known as Matthew and The Atlas, was keen to follow up 2023’s ‘This Place We Live’ quickly, jumping straight back into the studio at the end of that same year. Tapping up Bear’s Den member and producer Kev Jones for the challenge, they approached ‘Many Times’ with a production style antithetical to its title: each song was to be recorded in as few takes as possible, stripped-back and direct-to-tape, with no overdubs.

This process, the pair explain, was intended to capture Matt’s songwriting in its purest form. Recorded over just two days at the iconic Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, “the idea was just to capture a moment in time that is very, very honest and open,” Jones says. Inspired in part by Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ (which was itself captured over just two nights).

“We said to ourselves that I shouldn’t rehearse too much,” says Matt. “It’s a balancing act – you have to write the songs, and know the melody and the lyrics, and how you’re going to perform it. But only up to a point – you’re still trying to capture something a bit truer to its original form; something you haven’t over-rehearsed or refined down.”

It’s an approach that was taken to avoid the slow gestation process and over-thinking that Matt openly admits led to the four-year gap between his previous two albums. “I definitely tend to disappear into my studio space,” he says of previous records, “There’s definitely been a lot of overthinking in my home studio, and working on things, and taking a lot longer than I thought.”

For ‘Many Times,’ then, it was a total about-face in terms of approach. “I really wanted to do the complete opposite of that,” Matt explains, “and not think about instrumentation – just think about songwriting.”

Capturing those songs in their rawest form led to some of ‘Many Times” most stunning moments coming from the most unlikely of places. From the engineer running around the studio mid-take, to re-position microphones while Matt was still ‘in the zone,’ to rhythmic thigh slaps from Kev during the recording of ‘Standing Here’ adding one of the record’s only embellishments – and taking the track to a new dimension in the process – it’s a record that thrives on its simplicity. “It’s because the elements are so simple, the minutiae is massive,” says Matt.

“There was always an element of uncertainty about it, which I think was a good thing,” he continues of the recording process. Recording to tape – an expensive method in an increasingly digital age – “gave it an element of pressure,” he admits. But despite the pressure Matt might have felt, ‘Many Times’ feels like Matthew and The Atlas’ most effortless release in a decade.

“You’ve got nowhere to hide, the songs have to speak for themselves,” says Kev of the approach, and it’s something Matt agrees with. The result is a record which houses some of Matthew and The Atlas’ most brilliant songs to date.

Joel Porter

• Singer/Songwriter

Joel Porter sits in his studio in Nashville, an heirloom of sorts, where you can still hear the echoing sounds of a decade’s worth of music from the journeyman artists who helped usher him toward his version of a modern bard’s life. As an artist, composer, producer, and songwriter, Porter’s work embodies the endless landscapes of a youth spent in the plains of North Dakota, shifting borders of a genre often reduced to “alternative folk.” His latest release, A Costly Collection (2023), marks a continued journey with long-time collaborator Eric Hillman of Foreign Fields, following the path laid by the Mountain Twin EP (2017) and the Hiraeth EP (2018). Porter’s songs delve into the complexities of family, solitude, and the quiet tension of being both connected and isolated. On St. Anthony (from Mountain Twin), we eavesdrop on his apprehension to “writing songs that make my father cry.” In Amaranthine (from Hiraeth), we witness his plea to “tempt a friendly death, among my reminisced,” a meditation on loss and connection. By the time we reach “on your nape, I trace your spots and markers” in Little Tooth (from A Costly Collection), the listener is swept into Porter’s intimate world, where love, vulnerability, and change coalesce. Porter and Hillman form a sonic guyline— a creative thread running through a genre often muddled by fleeting trends and hollow experimentation. Their music is an invitation to a prodigal world, equal parts storytelling and confession, and a prompt to explore and understand the universal joys and struggles of the human journey a little better.