Michael Matera

Electronic musician Michael Matera started out his musical career as a guitar player, trying to push the limits of what a guitar was supposed to sound like, it didn't take long for Michael to find out how he could expand his sonic pallet with the addition of keyboards. Michael's first solo release, titled M, was met with positive reviews from many of Michael's peers in the electronic music scene. M is a collection of songs dating back to Michael's pre-keyboard days and features a few guitar-only tracks, but you may have difficulty picking these tracks out from the synth tracks. "I always wanted to make the guitars sound more synthetic" says Matera, "not that I find anything wrong with the natural sound of the guitar, I just wanted to expand on the tone and push it in anyway i could."

Two, Matera's second CD, released in the winter of 2000, expands on the electronic styles from M. Two is a more percussion- and beat-oriented CD; consciously, Michael was going for a more tribal sounding album. The inspiration for some of the tracks came from the adoption of an orphan elephant named Uaso. "Everyone asks me where I keep the baby elephant," says Matera. "Actually the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is responsible for the upbringing of little Uaso. Basically you donate money to help with the expenses of successfully raising the orphan and ultimately having the elephant released back into the wild." For more information on the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust visit http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org. Both of Michael Matera's releases are available at Neverwhere Direct; click for more information and to listen to some tracks from these releases. Also check out Michael's official Web site at http://www.matera.net