To hear the latest Elliot Matsu record is to hear the culmination of a life lived through music. Derivative enough to be accessible yet sophisticated enough to evoke pride-by-association, hard enough to puff your chest to yet soft enough to melt your heart - Elliot Matsu can take you through the full spectrum of human emotion before you can say "pop record." And in his instantly familiar voice we can hear a maturity, depth and understanding that points to the genuine article - that communion with artistic inspiration that we demand from the artists that we allow into our hearts and minds.
Elliot Matsu was born in 1976 in Chicago, IL. His musical career began at five years old when he was enrolled in the Suzuki School of Music to study piano. Suzuki stresses that students learn music first by ear rather than by sight reading. Elliot believes to this day that this method helps immeasurably with musical development.
At the age of 10, Elliot decided that rock 'n roll was his calling. His interests evolved from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys to Guns 'n Roses, Metallica and Motley Crue. His style changed from JC Penny's catalog offerings to stone washed jean jackets, boots with chains on them and t-shirts with the arms cut off. His father took him to the guitar store to buy an Olympic White Fender Squire Stratocaster. Under careful cultivation, his hair mushroomed into a thick, puffy mullet.
It was at this time that Elliot hooked up with guitar hero George Bellas to learn how to play the guitar like all of his new idols. George was signed on Shrapnel Records, and played with many big shred/metal names and gave lessons on the side. Although Elliot's shredding abilities stopped far short of his teacher's, his guitar playing and solo composition remains heavily influenced by his teacher's neo-classical style to this day.
With his new licks, kicks, denim and mullet, Elliot set out to destroy the world in his first band, 'Hyperten-shun' (yes, it was spelled wrong "for effect"). The band played a few school dances before it's members graduated from junior high school. Elliot's next band was formed in high school and was called 'Obduracy.' Obduracy played thrash metal at local clubs and released a few home made ep's on cassette tapes. Aside from playing in bands, Elliot held jobs as a bus boy, a telemarketer for a carpet cleaning company, a mattress delivery helper, a UPS delivery helper, an ice-cream scooper at Baskin Robins and a Nordic Track sales person.
After Elliot graduated from high school it was off to college and goodbye to mullets and metal. While at college he
self-released a few albums and ep's attempting a more pop rock sound. These were recorded on Alesis ADAT
machines (which were very new and cool at the time) with Elliot performing all of the vocal and instrument parts.
One such release, titled "Autonomy," was financed by his college roommate and released at retail.
Upon graduation from college, Elliot headed to New York City to pursue his dream. He studied to get his masters degree in entertainment business at NYU while recording bands and artists in his apartment at night. He spent time working at Billboard, Sony Music, TVT Records and Roadrunner Records. He hooked up with producer Jonathan Appell (engineer/ producer for Bette Middler, Carol King) and worked with many big studio musicians on his initial demos including Shawn Pelton (Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Crowe, David Byrne), Steve Wolf (Annie Lennox, Avril Lavigne) Mark Slutsky (Gavin DeGraw, PINK), Vinnie Zummo (Shawn Colvin, Joe Jackson), Rick Skatore (24-7 Spyz), Mark Shulman (Jewel) and Gregg Gerson (Billy Idol).
Aside from his solo work, Elliot also played bass in a band called 'On The Lam' with childhood friend Matt Friscia, who worked at BMG in New York and would go on to play drums in the Poster Children and Team Rockit. Matt eventually started Firetone Records and released Elliot's debut album, "2nd Avenue." The record continues to spin on radio stations and podcasts throughout the indie music world. One of the singles, "Cry," hit #30 on the small market adult contemporary charts here in the states. His other single, "Something Wrong," has gotten much attention in the independent music scene and was recently played on the runway at the 2008 Fall Fashion shows in New York.
Elliot's new record, "The Value of Power," is set to be released on Firetone Records in early 2009. Elliot has worked with Grammy Award Winning mix engineer Ben Arrindell (The Temptations) on a few of the tracks and the record is being mastered by Mark Blewett (Good Charlotte, Ashley Simpson).
Elliot lives in New York City with his wife Ellie and their beautiful daughter Allegra. He also plays lead guitar in Odd Zero, a punk metal band.
Source: http://elliotmatsu.net/bio.html
