Emperor X

Emperor X originated as the project of Chad R. Matheny, the Florida-born creator of cosmic lo-fi indie folk, and first appeared in the late 1990s through the debut album The Joytakers' Rakes/Stars on the Ceiling, Pleasantly Kneeling. Steady touring across the U.S. and Europe, along with inventive promotions such as burying physical releases in geocache locations and a steady flow of recordings, helped the artist cultivate a dedicated following; notable entries in that catalog include the 2011 album Western Teleport and the 2017 release Oversleepers International.

Matheny’s engagement with music started at age nine upon receiving a Casio SK-1 keyboard. Once he obtained a Tascam 4-track recorder during his teenage years, he began capturing songs that blended surreal and offbeat lyrics with loose arrangements and pop instincts, an approach that produced the 1998 debut The Joytakers' Rakes/Stars on the Ceiling, Pleasantly Kneeling. For several years afterward he balanced a career as a high school science teacher and studies toward a physics degree while continuing to record on the side. The 2004 album Tectonic Membrane/Thin Strip on an Edgeless Platform prompted a full commitment to music.

Since a 1994 car accident Matheny has been legally blind, so he depended on Greyhound buses while traveling to promote independent releases such as the 2005 album Central Hug/Friend Army/Fractal Dunes and the 2009 set The Blythe Archives, Vols. 1-2. From a base in Los Angeles he issued the 2011 album Western Teleport on the Bar/None label to critical praise and simultaneously disclosed the locations of 41 cassettes holding B-sides and early versions of its songs that had been buried at sites across the U.S. In 2012 he moved to Europe and settled in Berlin, where the network of trains and buses proved more practical than American transit options.

Because of his circumstances Matheny typically travels with only a guitar and a backpack of guitar pedals; those sounds appear on the 2013 concert collection Nineteen Live Recordings, which gathers several years of distinctive live performances. What began as an EP, the 2014 release The Orlando Sentinel, was expanded weeks before issuance to encompass nine additional tracks of experimental electronic dance music, turning it into a full-length album.

Around that period Matheny received a cancer diagnosis and completed an intensive course of chemotherapy and surgery. While recuperating in Berlin he started composing the songs that became the 2017 album Oversleepers International, which addresses his encounters with the illness and the European health care system.