Holy Motorway by Mattie Konig

When I began writing a new batch of songs immediately after the release of Cleanup Duty in early 2022, I had no real idea what form the resulting album would eventually take - but I could never have anticipated that its unhappy gestation period would last nearly two years. Rewrites, reworkings and rerecordings piled up as I agonised over the tiniest details, perfectionism reigning supreme for months on end; I lost my voice after a nasty bout of covid, and emerged acutely aware of my limitations as a vocalist; personal circumstances led me to re-evaluate the experiences that have fuelled my songwriting over the years; and I faced the final grim realisation that - even with an unfamiliar veneer of late 90s-inspired pop sounds - my repetoire of musical clichés and production shortcuts was getting stale. And the last thing you ever want to do as a so-called progressive or experimental musician is to repeat yourself.

With all that in mind, today I’m putting out a reasonably - but not totally - complete assembly of what was meant to be my next official album of original songs. In doing so I could talk endlessly about the nine tracks that survived the long baptism-by-petrol; how their lyrics tackle ideas of time, space, history, technology, nostalgia and dance; how their production tries to fuse pop and prog, joy and despair, before and after, the sacred and the propane. But the truth of the matter is I can’t stand to spend another second with these songs, and I need to release them in some form or another if I want to move on, both in my life and in my musical career. So, whether the rawness of these songs proves hard to love, or whether they still read as the fully-fledged Y2K bacchanalias I envisioned - like it or not, for better or for worse, the Holy Motorway is now open to traffic. Drive safe 🙏🛣

Tracklist

1.	Tolworth Tower (On The Horizon)	4:30

2.	It Happens Today	4:10

3.	Eternal Present	5:06

4.	Citywise	4:29

5.	November/Bravo	5:48

6.	Highs Beyond Your Years	2:28

7.	Dissonance Taker	7:15

8.	Do The Automation!	5:28

9.	In True Inbetweeners	3:10

Credits

released December 15, 2023

Mattie Konig - composition, production, sequencing, vocals, keyboards, guitars, percussion, field recordings, cover design

Some sound effects from freesound.org
All samples copyright their respective owners

Written and recorded 2022-2023

Note: no large language models were used in the writing of these songs

License