Biography
badmammal is the primary alias of Chris Matule, a musician and artist currently living in San Francisco. Chris has actively experimented with sound since he was a kid, playing both in bands and in smaller collaborations with friends. Making music that ranged from rock to acid house, he learned to play guitar, drums, and bass, always tinkering with audio gadgets and unorthodox sources of sound. During college, Chris attended many Friday nights at Washington’s D.C.’s infamous weekly event Buzz, where he grew closer to electronic music and began to explore DJ-ing and new forms of electronic production.
Chris soon began making drum and bass under the name process, and after befriending label proprietor Kurt Gluck, achieved his first release on Ohm Resistance Records with a song called fascination, a remix/audio hat-tip to The Cure's Fascination Street. Soon after, Ohm signed the very well-received Rickshaw, releasing it on a split-label 10” between Ohm Resistance and Offshore Industries. Chris continues making drum and bass under the name messenger, and is expected to have another release on Ohm Resistance later this year.
Not content, however, to limit himself to dance music, he worked constantly on developing his own sound, imagined as something that Brian Eno or Ninja Tune might listen to; a looser, less generic sound, one more expressive of his wide range of musical influence and capable of expressing a broader scope of moods and themes. To this end, he began to incorporate more live instrumentation into his music, blending lush, ambient guitars both acoustic and electric with IDM programming and analog bass. On Carrying a Deranged Gospel Choir, the songs commando (track 1), beach song (track 5) and big hills (track 8) showcase this mix well.
Towards the end of college, Chris and his fellow artist friends Greg Korn, John Fransella, and Philip Wassibauer began piecing together what would eventually become www.c-a.at. A loose organization of multimedia artists from around the world, the majority from Europe, they gather once a year for the Schmiede Hallein, a weeklong working festival held in an abandoned Austrian salt factory where participants create collaborative cross-genre art projects and demonstrations, hold lectures and discussions on contemporary art, technology and society, and then throw a big party at the end.
Chris then moved to Austria for a year, living in the mountains of Salzburg and working on the Schmiede project while diving deep into a colder, more computer and synthesizer-driven IDM sound, best represented on Carrying a Deranged Gospel Choir by the songs skydive (track 6) and song s (track 9). After his time in Austria, Chris temporarily returned to his hometown in New Jersey before setting out to Los Angeles. Introduced to Yamil Rezc from the Mexico City band Sub-Division by Trevor Randall of Hard Soul Records, Chris began contributing remixes to the band’s records and E.P.s, one of which appeared in the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Palme D’Or winning short film Ver Llover.
Chris spent much of his time in Los Angeles collecting instruments and experimenting with new styles, sounds, and techniques. He began adding vocals, harmonica, ukulele and cumbus into the mix, and then found-sounds, Ableton Live, talking toys, modified igil… in the process bringing to maturity a sound that’s uniquely his own, at once sophisticated and wide-eyed, breezy and full, oftentimes playful and always worth a closer listen.
Today, Chris happily resides in San Francisco, where he endeavors to make more music, take more photographs, release his work independently, and involve himself in art as much as possible.
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