Review Fix Exclusive: Dante Matas Talks ‘Talking to Yourself’

Review Fix chats with singer/songwriter/guitarist Dante Matas, who discusses his goals and new single, “Talking to Yourself.”

Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?

Dante Matas: I started playing piano when I was about 7 and never looked back. I just wrote little instrumental piano pieces until I learned guitar at around 12 and began writing full songs. 

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Matas: It’s like I’m solving a puzzle that has thousands of correct answers. When things are flowing, I don’t think about what I’m doing at all, I just act. When things are not flowing, I think really hard about what I’m trying to do up to the point where I lose all objectivity and completely forget the significance of the song I’m writing. At that point, I try to stop thinking about it and go for a walk or do the dishes and let myself daydream. Sometimes, if I really did allow myself to stop thinking about the song, a random idea will pop into my head out of nowhere and it will be the exact puzzle piece I was looking for in order to get back into the flow. Then I repeat the whole process until somehow a song is finished.

Review Fix: What inspires you?

Matas: I think I could be inspired by almost anything; I just have to look at it from the right angle. Inspiration has always been sort of easy for me to find. I struggle more with executing an idea before I’ve worked on it so long that it drives me crazy. I think that’s a common issue in music today where we have access to so many plugins and pedals and sounds that making final decisions can sometimes seem impossible. Remembering what inspired the song in the first place has always been the way out of that for me.

Review Fix: What makes this single special?

Matas: It’s actually a very old song, I think I started writing the melody and chords on a family vacation to Croatia when I was 15. When I went on tour last year with my band I felt we needed a new song to play and I remembered this song and wrote some lyrics and suddenly it was done.

For the recording, I had my friends and family send me clips of themselves reading really cliche motivational quotes and used them to create a chaotic collage of unprecedented optimism that appears midway through the song. Even though the quotes are so positive, the disorienting blend of the voices talking over each other makes the collage sound more like a mass miscommunication.

Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?

Matas: It is melodically focused music with complex but hopefully honest lyrics. I try to write catchy songs but I also like to experiment and throw in some weird moments. I’ve taken things that I like about music from every era and tried to make them my own. I really like to have a kind of narrative throughout the lyrics because I’ve always liked that in the music I grew up listening to. Sometimes the narrative is left intentionally ambiguous and abstract though. I also tend to throw in an excessive amount of chord changes for whatever reason. 

Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?

Matas: Currently my live show is very different as I play with a fantastic 5-piece band and they really help me take the songs to another level. That band is Omar Shabbar on the guitar, Nathaniel Edgar on keys and synth, Joseph Landau on bass, and Colin McNally on drums. We usually change the arrangements of the recorded versions of the songs quite a bit, often blending several songs together. I’ve always liked when bands sounds totally different live so we’re just embracing that mentality to the fullest.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2019?

Matas: I’m filming some professionally shot full-band live videos with the band at The Root Down studio in Toronto over the next few weeks. Those should be out later this year. We also have a whole bunch of gigs lined up over the next few months that I’m excited about. If I suddenly become extremely productive, I might even release a new EP before the year is out.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Matas: I’m always working on new music and I hope to release some of it by the end of the year. More gigs, more touring. The usual.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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