Mathew Jonson

Mathew Jonson’s route into techno’s upper ranks during the 2000s traced an unlikely start inside a bagpipe ensemble, where, at age seven, he supplied marching snare behind the adult players. In his native Vancouver he pursued jazz and classical studies throughout high school, then briefly trained as a recording engineer after graduation before abandoning the program. By the late ’90s he had immersed himself in drum’n’bass, working as a DJ until the decade’s close, at which point he gravitated instead toward the eccentric minimal techno issued by Trelik and Perlon.

DreamWorks became the first label to issue his own material when, under the Decibel alias, he reworked two Nelly Furtado singles—“Party’s Just Begun (Again)” and “Turn Off the Light.” Between 2001 and 2003 a succession of Itiswhatitis singles steadily elevated his standing; “Typerope” in particular resonated with Ricardo Villalobos and Richie Hawtin, by which time his signature analog aesthetic had already crystallized. In 2005 further releases appeared on Sub Static, Arbutus, and Hawtin’s M_nus, most notably “Decompression,” whose weighty low-end pressure and polarizing impact that year recalled his earlier drum’n’bass immersion.

Around the same period Jonson helped establish Wagon Repair, a move that paralleled his shift toward more abstract terrain. From 2005 to 2010 the bulk of his output surfaced on the imprint, often departing sharply from dance-floor conventions and the dark, warped neo-trance aesthetic he might otherwise have sustained, thereby alienating some followers. Among the period’s strongest statements was “When Love Feels Like Crying,” an eleven-minute, sparsely arranged tearjerker whose emotional reach rivaled the opening minutes of Carl Craig’s “At Les.” His debut album, Agents of Time, finally arrived on Wagon Repair in 2010.

A prolific collaborator, Jonson recorded at length with the four-piece Cobblestone Jazz—also known as the Modern Deep Left Quartet—with his brother Daniel in Midnight Operator, and with Luciano.