Dallas-based producer and singer MATTIE draws on electronic, soul, and hip-hop to carve out a woozy, nocturnal space to live. Their debut EP, Jupiter’s Purse, is co-produced by fellow Texas native Black Taffy, whose beats reinforce MATTIE’s voice in hazy, trip-hop-inflected architecture. Beguiling and menacing at once, Jupiter’s Purse announces an artist whose music braces with unreleased tension, keeping you balanced on the edge of volcanic emotion.
The five songs on Jupiter’s Purse are from the point of view of Mhuv, a character MATTIE uses to explore the duality of the self. The process of coming into their own is in constant flux across the EP, full of uncertainties and doubt that spider out into uneasy, eerie songs. The lurching beat and trembling bells on “Cellfish” form a chilling backdrop for MATTIE’s elongated vowels: “Why can’t I admit that I’ve been cell fish?/Why won’t I tell the truth?” On “Human Thing,” which sounds as though it were delivered by a pleading cyborg, they dial into the conflict of using money to maintain a strong sense of self, indicting an omnipresent culture of commodification: “It’s consuming us, I am a witness!” they conclude, voice cracking into a gasp.
MATTIE and Black Taffy form a unique bond here, as the latter amplifies MATTIE’s hefty alto voice with an unsteady mix of electronic and hip-hop music. Murky synth melodies and washes of string and woodwind samples dot these songs like constellations, with each diffuse element grounded by MATTIE’s commanding, charismatic pull, transmuted and pitch-shifted at will. Their voice filters into a gurgle of feedback on “Out This Bitch,” where MATTIE’s enunciation swiftly changes as they shift further into an anti-establishment mindset: “This world ain’t got nothing for us/Maybe that’s why it bores us/It was before your skin, that black that black that black…” they chant, the word “black” filtered out into a kaleidoscopic echo and a source of vital, ancestral strength.
MATTIE embraces self-dissection throughout the EP, using nervous howls and shrugged-off boasts to express their own inherent validity. On “Cloudts,” the EP’s centerpiece, they create an alien lullaby that shuttles by with a shimmering string sample that sounds ripped out of a Disney movie and dragged through the dirt. Though MATTIE generally uses their music to examine feeling uncomfortable in one’s own skin, here they allow a concession to a more hopeful future. “I didn’t know that rocks were valuable,” they sing over static pops and a glowering melody. “But I am a diamond and let me find out.” That image—a jewel glinting through chipped-away stone—is an appropriate one for Jupiter’s Purse, where even the most off-kilter moment is one of beauty.
