Artist Interview: Matthew Curry, aka Safety Scissors
Dorkcore for the Masses
By Marsha Vdovin

You may not have heard of Safety Scissors, part of the burgeoning "Dorkcore" scene. Matthew is American, but his work is much more popular in Germany. With two solo albums under his belt plus numerous EPs and remixes (some for Matmos - Bjork's fave back up band), his music has been snagged by several filmmakers and ad agencies for use as soundtracks. He manages to play many instruments and sing and record and produce without being formally trained in any of it.

Matthew Curry, aka Safety Scissors

I love your album Tainted Lunch. I really like a lot of the sounds and especially the fact that you're singing.
Thanks.

Was it daring for you to sing?
Yeah, I think so, because I'm not a trained singer.

A lot of people in your genre of music don't have vocals. They just do instrumental stuff. It reminds me of a lot of early Eno pop stuff, like "Another Green World."
Yeah. I'm definitely inspired by the early Eno stuff. He wasn't a singer necessarily, either, but I think it was important for him to be singing the vocals, and just get them down on tape right. Arthur Russell is another singer that doesn't have a traditional singer voice, but it wouldn't make sense if someone else were singing it. A lot of reviews comment, "Oh, he's not a male vocalist," and I think they're just stuck in this paradigm, expecting a certain thing. There are a lot of people that are doing vocals in electronic music. I don't really like just a nerdy guy with a cute girl singing pretty vocals. I just hear too much of that. It kind of gets boring pretty quick. You can expect what you're going to hear too easily.

Yeah, that's true. I see a lot of techno and down-tempo stuff like that.
Yeah, for me, it's very important to keep doing things that are different and exciting. I guess I'm sort of learning in public, at least in terms of singing, and even playing instruments. Tackling that challenge was important for me. It was definitely a scary thing . . . it's still an ongoing scary thing. I'm trying to play instruments more on the material I'm working on now, which is a challenge.

“The LA2A and the 1176 are some of the only software compressors that work well not just as a dynamic tool but as an effect”

Do you have a musical background? You went to an unusual high school, right?
I did. It was an arts high school. You had to apply to get in. And basically all the freaks from all over the state of Minnesota went there.

It was a boarding school?
It was.

Was it kind of training you in ideas and concepts? Or learning craft and skill kind of thing?
We did both. The teachers were all very interesting and very knowledgeable about the stuff that was out there. I didn't know so much about conceptual art and superinteresting music until I came out to San Francisco, but I was in the media department of the arts high school.

So you did film and video?
Yeah, and photography. But I did experiment with some sounds. They had an Akai S1000 sampler that was exciting for me. I snuck in to the music studio to use it.

Did you make audio pieces, or did you perform?
I made a few audio pieces. But once I had this thing that was stuck in a closet that just made weird noises as people walked by.

So then you came to San Francisco and went to the San Francisco Art Institute? What department were you in there?
I was interdisciplinary, so I could just take classes wherever. It was nice to have that freedom. Mainly I was taking classes in New Genres, which did deal with concepts more than craft. I was able to play around with sound. I was a bit frustrated, because there weren't so many classes there that dealt directly with sound. But I found a few very inspiring teachers. In fact, Paul DeMarinis is now teaching at Stanford. But he was very encouraging with ideas around sound. And his own work is really, really exciting.

I love his pieces with Edison tubes. And his museum installations that use those and turntables.
Yeah. He did a whole show at SFMOMA around turntables.

Watch a video of Matthew in his studio

Yeah. He's really brilliant. It's always nice when you're in school to get a mentor like that. Did you have a moment when you stopped being a visual person and became an audio person? And a moment when you became a musician?
The moment when I became a musician is a little bit more clear. That's when I decided to stop going to art school because I wasn't getting that much out of it. My experience with the art world was pretty frustrating. It's a much smaller realm, and it's a lot more competitive in some respects. I was doing music and art in parallel at that time and was having a lot more success with the music. There were a lot of German labels that were interested in releasing my music, and I was able to play these shows. Nothing like that was happening with the art I was doing. At least at that time, there was a really great community around music. And a lot more people listen to music than go out to museums and galleries.

Yeah, it's more popular culture, as opposed to high culture. Now how did you end up living in Berlin?
I was on a tour that Joshua Kit Clayton put together with my roommate, who goes by the name of Sutekh. They were just starting to release music. I think I had my first record come out that summer. It was more of a techno record. They said, "Oh, yeah, come along." There was an apartment that was rented there. And I popped over, and did some shows with Sutekh and Kit Clayton. I decided that "Wow, this is a pretty great city, I have to live here." I think when I came to San Francisco, I said the same thing.

How long did you live in Berlin?
Two and a half years. I have probably spent at least two months in Berlin this year. I'm kind of torn between two cities now that I have really good groups of friends both here and there.

Why do you think your music does so well in Germany?
Well, electronic music just works more in Europe. You hear it everywhere. It's just a bit more embedded in the culture, the vocabulary of electronic music. And people are more open to it there. There's also more funding for interesting art, and because of that, there are more things that happen there that are new and exciting. People are more exposed and open to experimental art and music.

Let's talk about your studio. You are on a Mac; what's your main software program?
I use Logic most of the time.

And you use what kind of monitors?
I have two pairs of monitors set up right now: the Mackies and the Genelecs. With the Genelecs, I hear different things, so I got into the habit of switching between the two pairs. I like having a little bit more difference in the pairs. It's amazing how different sounding they are. But I got into that habit when I was mixing my record, with Vladislav Delay. He's the person who exposed me to the UAD-1 card, which is now one of the most essential parts of my studio.

I'm surprised by the number old synthesizers you have.
I always have been kind of a gear nerd . . . and there are a lot of old synthesizers.

I kind of assumed those were a lot of software synths or Max/MSP sounds that I was hearing.
Yeah. I don't use too many-the main software instrument I use now is just a sampler, a software sampler.

What else do you use? Do you use Live?
No. I use Max/MSP to create sounds, and I use that to play live. My friends Joshua and Sutekh developed a method of playing audio files at different tempos just using the .wav object several years ago, and that's kind of been my version of Ableton Live for a long time. I've built on that Max/MSP patch, and Sutekh and Twerk both have developed that patch to fit their personal needs in a way that works well for me. It actually gives me more flexibility for what I want to do live than Live does.

Let's talk about the UAD-1 card. Do you have any favorite processors?
In all of my files you can find a lot of the LA-2A and the 1176.
Why?
The LA-2A is a super simple compressor, and I like the fact it just has two knobs and it's very smooth. The LA-2A and the 1176 are some of the only software compressors that work well not just as a dynamic tool but as an effect. But usually I'm using them just as a tool, as a leveling amplifier. There's something that's just right about it, and the simplicity is very admirable. The only sets of plug-ins I have installed on the machine are Pluggo and the Universal Audio plug-ins.

I'm really into the EMT reverb Plate 140, too. I like older-sounding reverbs. I have this old hardware screen reverb that is on a lot of my tracks. Recently, I've been using the EMT reverb on the UAD-1 card instead. I'm probably going to get another card in the very near future.

Do you have any special techniques that you use the UAD-1 for?
I've used the TremModEcho as a sound generator a few times. In Logic you have to put a blank audio file on the track with the plug-in instance so it is active, but then I just crank up the feedback and record a couple layers of automation. At first I didn't think much of the plug-in, but it is actually very usable and the regeneration sounds good for a digital animal. I think I first stumbled across the self-oscillation in one of the presets and then started exploring, getting some great drones and aquatic-sounding waves of sound.

Another trick I have tried with the UA plugs is to send all the drums to an aux bus in Logic as well and do some majorly insane compression with the 1176 on that. I have that play very quietly along with the normal drums and percussion, but it adds some nice grit. This is a hardware trick I heard about in some nerdy magazine and translated to the software plug-in realm. It worked well and did exactly what I wanted it to!

Where do you find some of your inspiration?
Now it's pretty common to hear music made in a bedroom and it's no longer really "outsider" music, but back in the '60s or '70s it was much harder to record without having a budget. I really love the music from R. Stevie Moore who had access to all his father's recording tools in his basement (his father was Scotty Moore, the main guitarist for Mr. Elvis Presley). It's one of the earliest solo recording adventures of one lonely guy in his room. I suppose he is another one like Eno doing a lot himself and not worrying about how others define music. There is something incredibly unique about music made this way that I resonate with. Music made this way, music that's just separated from tradition and the unstated rules about music and recording, is often more rich with personality. These days, without the need for much physical gear, it is much easier to separate yourself from the old path of studio recording and do your own thing. I suppose it's almost the norm now, so many people have home studios, but I see a big value of working like this in my own music and in the music I find inspiring.

Safety Scissors Website