CASH MATTOCK

By Frank DeBlase
A stranger walked up and handed me a package. It was a standard press kit stuffed with CD, photo, and bio. I waited for the big pitch that usually follows, but it didn't come.

"This is not me," he said simply.

Needless to say, I was intrigued.

"This is Cash Mattock," he said.

Cash Mattock is a character, a persona that allows his creator to make music and get perspective on a sordid past from the safety of anonymity. Cash Mattock is the mask for a man seeking resolution --- maybe even redemption --- through his music.

Mattock's debut release, Sexy 21st Century Sleaze, is an album almost 10 years in the making. It comes from a dark place.

"A lot of these songs I wrote for this record were written during a very unfortunate time in my life," Mattock says, "in which I was hanging out with some very bad people. I actually went through some life-changing things, including bad experiences with drugs and things like that."

Sexy 21st Century Sleaze is a concept album focusing on this period --- one night in particular --- that included chemical excess, jealousy, rage, rape, and a host of other human vices. Mattock approaches it quasi-satirically.

"It's about relationships with people, relationships with your friends or girlfriend or whatever," he says, "and how this all revolved around this underground community and how it's skewed and how people are kind of just living in this fantasy world."

Mattock's creator has been in and out of the Rochester music scene for years. Creating Cash Mattock allows him to get away from expectations.

"Any attachments to anything else I've ever done I just don't want to bring to the table," he says. "It's nothing that's really important or that should have anything to do with it."

"Each band has its own exploration," he says, "its own focus on a different genre. Everybody has their own way. I want to do something that's me, something that's original. I didn't want to do what's already been done and I thought this would be a unique way to control what was going on, using the studio itself as an instrument."

Mattock started work on the project four years ago. He bought a computer and began creating samples.

"It was a different writing approach," he says. "I wanted to approach it from a collage perspective."

So besides exorcising, Mattock was exploring uncharted waters. He employed the help of Ryan Kemp (Moviees, El Destructo), Paul Morabito (Lovematics, Moviees, Chesterfield Kings), Keith Parkins (Quitters, Duke Galaxy & the Pipeliners, 5 Watt Bulb), Chris Kemp (Phoenix Red, The Q, Hello Goodbye, Asyd Malaise), and producer and multi-instrumentalist Chris Cimicata.

What wound up on Sexy 21st Century Sleaze was a sonic, borderline industrial assault of profound intensity and anger. The acoustic detours sound Brit-pop --- like a less ecstatic XTC, an even angrier Paul Weller, or Paul McCartney with his wings pulled off.

Lyrics notwithstanding, the music itself churns and writhes. It's more turmoil than pain. The vocals are raw and one shade shy of homicide.

"There was a lot of intensity required," Mattock says. "I mean, I couldn't have portrayed the songs and just sing them. When I recorded a song it was almost a performance, even though you're not seeing a performer."

Each performance is listed on the back of the album next to the name of the vice it illustrates.

"Every single one of these words reads a fault in the human persona," he says. Revenge, addiction, exploitation, obsession, madness, doubt, vanity, jealousy, confusion... the list goes on. And each is addressed on its own cut with mounting, palpable rage.

You can hear his frustration on "Indecision": "Somewhere between love and hate / I don't deserve this fate / Now I'm just a half a man / I know I started this ride / I threw my arms up, didn't try to hide / But man this wasn't part of the plan."

You can hear the imminent danger on "Hot Pair Of Knives" when he sings, "I've been banging my head against the wall / suddenly I don't feel so tall."

Hopefully this album has put some of the demons to bed.

"Seeing the songs together from the perspective I have now, it definitely tells a story and gives a lesson," Mattock says. "I always write something so it's tangible, so I can have control over it. Because then it becomes something that's on paper or something that exists in a musical realm where I can take it out and explore it whenever I want, so I can have control over it. Instead of it having control over me."

- THE CITY

By Michelle Picardo
Cash Mattock releases his new CD, Sexy 21st Century Sleaze. Influenced by artists as diverse as The Velvet Underground, Robert Johnson, Iggy Pop and The Beatles, Cash may have been under the Rochester radar of late, but is set to change all that with this exceptionally powerful concept CD. This rock 'n' roll explosion of an album features performances from members of bands like The Moviees, The Chesterfield Kings and The Quitters, and should most definitely be heard. - FREETIME

Jeff Spevak
Staff music critic
Cash Mattock presents an unusual event at 8 tonight at the Bug Jar, 219 Monroe Ave. It's a listening party for his new album, Sexy 21st Century Sleaze. Mattock will probably look familiar to the Bug Jar crowd but the music won't be familiar. Sexy 21st Century Sleaze is a multi-layered, glammy, electronica-cocktail mix that, when it rocks out, sounds like a young Paul Stanley demo.
- Democrat and Chronicle

by Dan Bernal

Some creative and occasionally slick production dresses up this eclectic solo outing from upstate NY-based singer/guitarist Cash Mattock. The disc opens with a couple obviously Nine Inch Nails-inspired songs featuring the familiar industrial blend of organic/electronic instrumentation, a powerful and tightly fuzzed-out guitar underbelly and Mattock's nearly mimicking vocal style which closely captures Reznor's throaty half-scream. By the third track, however, Mattock takes a left turn and shows himself more broadly intentioned producer than niche performer. The acoustic and brushed-snare driven "A Girl Like You" crosses into Violent Femmes territory while "Out of My Shell" throws some whiskey in the tank for a quick stoner rock quarter mile burn. As the 17-song disc continues, more stylistic flavors pop in and out, showcasing the impressive range of this project, but likewise exposing Mattock's vocal limitations. The layout could also use some refinement to better reflect the discs complex audio production. Where bands like Ween or Sea of Urchin can drag you through their record collections within the span of a single release with little or no stylistic residue from song to song, Mattock is notably more dynamic with his music and production than with his lyrics or vocal delivery. There are some tunes to really like here which I could easily see placed as background in film or TV. This is an interesting and well-thought-out first effort, his second will likely be worth this incubation period.
- LOLLIPOP

BY Sean Helton
Cash Mattock • Sexy 21st Century Sleaze • self-released • OK, this dude is ALL over the place. The opening track, "Take You On," is this huge Led Zeppelin-meets-NIN thing that just blows my mind. If every track were like that I would have declared this the album of the year. But Cash is not afraid to mix it up on you. He goes from garage rock on "Out of My Shell" to the Femmes-esque "A Girl Like You" to the space-age lounge ditty "Is This Love?" Don't get me wrong, he does all of them well, and what's more, he sings every song sounding most of the time like Trent Reznor, which makes for an even more interesting mix.


- IMPACT PRESS

Cash Mattock verhaalt op Sexy 21st Century Sleaze over de lotgevallen die hij op een raveparty meemaakte. Hij introduceert meerdere karakters en vertelt aan de hand van ingewikkelde verhaallijnen vele parallelle verhalen. Bijvoorbeeld over de relatie tussen Mattock en zijn ex-vriendinnetje. De ingenieuze plot leiden we af uit mysterieus klinkende titels zoals ‘I Need You’, ‘A Girl like You’, ‘Indecision’, ‘Get It Straight’, ‘Is This Love?’, ‘Make Up Your Mind’ en ‘Leave Me Behind’. Je kan al vermoeden dat Cash Mattock een man is die diepgang heel erg belangrijk vindt.

Op muzikaal vlak komt het allemaal erg belegen over. Sexy 21st Century Sleaze schiet tegen een razend tempo uit de startblokken om in het ene ordinaire rockdeuntje na het andere te verzanden. Daarbij rockt Cash Mattock als een waanzinnige maar hij schijnt niet goed te beseffen dat hij op een spoor zit dat al door duizenden voor hem is platgelopen.

Naarmate de rave erger wordt, glijdt de muziek af naar nog meer banaliteit. Daar zijn drugs natuurlijk ook niet vreemd aan en de bio verhaalt over excessief gebruik (‘Hot Pair of Knives’) dat uitmondt in een verkrachting. Ironisch genoeg komt de Arabische inslag van ‘Dumping His Evil’, het nummer dat die thematiek begeleidt, over als een aangename verpozing tussen al het nodeloos opzichtige gerock. Muzikaal wordt het er helaas niet sterker op.

Tot overmaat van ramp wordt een vriend even later met een overdosis gehospitaliseerd en slaat Mattock op ‘Forgetful Days’ aan het mijmeren over de zinloos verspilde avond. Jammer dat hij er ons mee lastig valt. Maar op zich valt dit nog mee want Mattock is blijkbaar van plan om een visuele versie van het verhaal op dvd te zetten. We houden ons hart vast.
tekst: Hans van der Linden

- KINDA MUZIK

Words by Danny Martin
August 2005
RATED:
FOUR OUT OF FIVE STARS

God this is a tricky one, so it's going to be really brief. First off because this album contains 17 songs of which describing each ones sound would take me forever (the press release which came with this CD is 4 A4 sheets long!), but primarily because this guy is a bloody nut, and his album hums with this undertone. Lets put it into context of exactly what you are playing with here.

Cash Mattock is a Yank, that is if he is actually human. Which even his accompanying essay doesn't quite give away. Cash plays garage punk, but he also rams his tunes guts full of tasty effects and eclectic dance beats. As he admits "It's a rock artist's perspective on sampling" It works to quite outstanding effect, to pull of this sort of fusion on a concept album is some achievement.

All 17 tracks took 4 years to write and master, but are all the entangled tale of one night out on the rave circuit of Rochester, NY. Predominately spiralling round the love story of Cash and a former girlfriend but with subplots and sinister characters that would make many a scriptwriter drool. From the ecstatic feelings of "Indecision" which speaks of Cash's and his ex amour's first stolen glimpses of each other to the perverse and blatantly dark "Dumping his evil" which documents the raping of his said ex by a secondary clubber who has secretly been obsessing over her all night. Honestly this is car crash music.

"Forgetful days" wraps the whole package up as Cash reflects on a wasted night, the rape of his former lover and the hospitalisation of a close friend. It's all pretty messed up, but at the same time scarily realistic.

His sounds have to be sampled to be appreciated, from laughter samples and crazed harmonica solos to orgasm overdubs, it really is unique. Mental yes, but unique.

- LeedsMusicScene