73. Mat Zo

Mat Zo

“I wanna move away from calling my music trance,” Mat Zo tells DJmag over the phone on a September morning. “It's just dance music, basically. I am not really thinking in terms of genre.”...


 

Style: Who cares?
Best known for: Doing different things and doing things differently.
Tune of 2011: “Cirez D 'Mokba'
Breakthrough DJ/Producer of 2011: Arty

What's the future of DJing? Live sets and light/visual shows.
Favourite app? Deliverance. It's basically room service for your house.
Discovery of the year? The myth that there are used women's underwear vending machines in Tokyo is a lie
Rediscovery of the year? Arno Cost & Norman Doray 'Apocalypse' is a classic that fits perfectly in my current sets.
Awkward Moment? Some kid asked me for my autograph, thinking I was 'a comedian on Comedy Central'.
Style or substance? You can't have one without the other.
Pet Hate? I can't think of any pet hates, but used to have a pet cat that I hated.

“I wanna move away from calling my music trance,” Mat Zo tells DJmag over the phone on a September morning. “It's just dance music, basically. I am not really thinking in terms of genre.”
Hardly surprising for a producer split between the melodic four-to-the-floor tunes he makes under the Mat Zo moniker (short for Matan Zohar) - recently slowed down to “become more house-y, more like techno, deeper” - and the emotive d&b he occasionally releases as MRSA. An artist that “wants to get influences from as many different styles as possible,” he's watched, with an eager eye, the ongoing electronic coup storming global charts - in a world where High Contrast, Underworld and Diplo are converging to collaborate with the likes of Tiësto.
“I am really all for it, to be honest,” he admits. “The commercialisation of dance music is great, because it reaches a wider audience. I've always been about trying loads of different genres.”
Indeed. Still dropping spine-tingling big-room bangers onto Anjunabeats throughout 2010/11 - including uplifting smasher, 'Rebound', alongside Arty - he is also digging house reinventors like Pearson Sound/Ramadanman and Martyn (currently inspiring his production), and his dream collaboration would be with Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood. There's nothing predictable about this guy. ADAM SAVILLE