Junto Profile: Matthew Ackerman
This Junto Profile is part of an ongoing series of short Q&As that provide some background on various individuals who participate regularly in the online Disquiet Junto music community.
What’s your name? Matt Ackerman. Moniker: modus pony.
Where are you located? Los Angeles/Redondo Beach. I grew up in Sacramento. Moved to LA after high school and lived here for 22 years now with a short stint in Orange County where I studied Film and Media at UC Irvine. Growing up in Sacramento, there really wasn’t much experimental or weird going on in terms of the music scene. I think there is now, and actually there has been since at least the 2000s but in the nineties it just seemed like everyone was into new metal. I wouldn’t say this was the reason I moved but generally speaking, I just didn’t feel there was much possibility there for me.
What is your musical activity? Even though I don’t sing or write lyrics, I still think in terms of songs. It’s kind of second nature to me. I have on occasion tried to throw that learning out the window but I don’t enjoy it as much. That being said, I’m a big fan of the sort of prompt-based, or limitation-based thinking the Junto exemplifies. Prompts allow you to try on new personas and create something you wouldn’t have otherwise. In fact, I often need some sort of prompt or idea to even get started on something. I think it takes practice however, to use discretion, to keep what really works from the experiment and toss the rest. I try not to get too obsessed with the “rules” I’ve decided to follow. Ideally, I’d like my music to be both enjoyable and interesting, but if I could only pick one, I think I’d rather be enjoyable. I’ve been told on occasion that my music is “funny,” sometimes even when I didn’t intend it to be. I take it as a compliment regardless.
I started on bass guitar when I was 15 (I’m 41 now). Learned mostly on my own with some help from a friend. I had a 4-track recorder and a sampler too. I would record eclectic little funk punk things that were more like jams than songs. I also remember experimenting with the 4-track, recording a bunch of non-sense and playing it backwards.
After being in LA a few years, I played bass in a band called Strofik. The style was sort of an extension of the heavy rock you heard back then but the riffs were a little more ornate. We played a handful of venues and I pretty much hated performing. Still do. This was circa 2004-2006. We didn’t know what we were doing composition-wise but we were all learning together. The camaraderie was really pretty great. Then, unfortunately the guitarist passed away. There was a few other attempts at starting bands after that but it just wasn’t the same. By then, digital recording had advanced a little and I didn’t really need a band to do what I wanted anymore.
After my band days, I got more into writing and recording on my own, releasing things on Bandcamp. I found it easier to experiment on my own in a DAW like Ableton than it was in a band context. I was lucky enough to meet some interesting talented people to collaborate with through Soundcloud and through an experimental music blog I used to run, Caliper Music. I did two albums with the Madrid based singer-songwriter, Suko Pyramid in 2018 and 2020 that I think are pretty unique. Collaborating online is different than working in a live band for sure, but I find it’s a little easier in some regards and that camaraderie can still be found even when you’re thousands of miles apart.
During the pandemic, like a lot of people, I was off from work for a while. I decided to take guitar lessons from Bill Harkleroad (“Zoot Horn Rollo” of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band) after seeing an interview with him on YouTube. I already knew some basic music theory but I learned a ton more from Bill. You can sort of hear the change in my music after 2020. My music before was very rhythmic and riff-based but the harmonic element was sort of simple (as you might expect from a bassist). My stuff these days is a lot more jazzy (at least harmonically) and guitar oriented. Practice is also more important to me these days as I’m trying to claw back some musicianship that I think was lost when I decided to focus on recording a decade ago.
What is one good musical habit? I would say try to continually start in a new place. Where you start influences where you’ll end up so if you want variety in your sound, try starting in a new place. It could be some clever experimental idea but it really doesn’t have to be. If your songs lately have started with some guitar chords, try starting with a bass line, or a rhythm. Play an instrument you don’t know how to play. Try a new synth sound you wouldn’t normally use and tailor the music to that sound. Choose something you want to get better at and make it the focus. Just start in a new place, whatever it is.
What are your online locations? For social media, I’m mainly on Mastodon these days: zirk.us/@ModusMatt. I still have my Twitter (sorry, “X”) but use it strictly for promotion now: twitter.com/moduS_ponY. Also on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/moduspony and soundcloud.com/modusmatt. And Bandcamp of course: moduspony.bandcamp.com.
What was a particularly meaningful Junto project? I would say the Junto project I was most happy with as far as the end product was Hot Mise en Abyme (disquiet0348). Mise en Abyme is the art historical term for fractal/recursion. I called the track Praugress, referring to the augmented chord that overlaid the entire piece, the individual notes being drones over each of three parts. Then three drones were nested within each of those parts, with a series of three chord progressions, 9 in total. The time signature was also 3/4 which gave it sort of a waltzy/classical feel at times. I was so happy with the results I put it on an my album, Ulterior Frequencies: moduspony.bandcamp.com/track/praugress.
If I could pick another one simply for how fun it was, it would be Gronkytonk (disquiet0302), which was a fictional genre that appeared in a Malka Older book, Infomacracy. The assignment was simply to imagine what Gronkytonk would sound like. I imagined “weird honkytonk” and set about replicating some honkytonk conventions with some unconventional electronic elements added. The result was a goofy jam called Dog Bite my Jesus Baby: soundcloud.com/moduspony/dog-bite-my-jesus-baby-disquiet0302. It’s also probably the only track on which I sing, kind of. It’s very badly pitch shifted with a sampler. My favorite comment on that track was: “what kind of pills were used for this, love it.”
You mentioned the lack of experimental music locally when you were growing up. The web was just getting going in the early 1990s. Do you have any sense if for younger people today online accessibility of esoteric culture means local influences are less important? Yeah, I think if I were a little more plugged into what was going on, I would have been in the know about some interesting things happening in Sacto in the ’90s, but as you say the internet was just getting going and it took a little more initiative to find something unique, whereas now you fall into a rabbit hole without even trying.
Also, I was young so a computer was still something I mainly used for homework. But I think it’s fair to say something shifted not just with the internet providing access to esoteric culture but also with digital distribution. Everyone is their own scene, so to speak, meaning an artist doesn’t have to cater to local culture and interests to get attention. Any small town can and probably does have a few bedroom musician weirdos doing their own unique thing. It’s also easier for said weirdos to find each other and collaborate, whether it be locally or globally. There’s obviously a downside we could talk about as far as the subversion of local culture and the atomization of society but as far as individual expression, I think it’s great.
Can you talk a bit more about your sense of what makes your music “funny” and what “funny” means for music more generally? Well, there’s the obvious tracks I’ve done that have a humorous element, like “Bananafest Destiny,” which has a cut-up of talking samples made to say silly things. But it’s harder to say what can make an instrumental track funny, one where there’s no semantic language element. It may have something to do with shared cultural expectations with music (or maybe just expectations set up by the music itself), and having those expectations defied. I have a track called “if you only knew what I did for this 6 piece bakeware set” that ends with a progressively frenetic series of random synth notes, then a long pause, then one more little unexpected note at the end. When I think about music that makes me smile or laugh, there’s a recognition by the listener that the artist is being joyful or silly, being adventurous in a fun way rather than a serious way. I think Thelonius Monk is a good example of what I would call “joyfully avant-garde.” He always makes me smile. In the same way a comedian might make their audience see the world in some new absurd way, so can a musician make the listener hear the world in a new absurd way.
