Feb. 01, 2012 - Issue #850: Godot

Mitchmatic

Fri, Feb 3, Wunderbar

By his own admission, Mitch Holtby—better known on local stages as Mitchmatic, one of Old Ugly Records' core rap trio—has been working on It's Probably Raining for longer than he'd ever intended. "Too long," Holtby offers over an email, noting that much of that time was spent perfecting the very final stretch of a particularly troublesome track.


"Some of the beats can be dated back to four years ago or so, but most of the writing/recording was done last winter," Holtby recalls. "I hit a wall on the last verse though and for the next 10 months didn't get anywhere—it was horrible.  I'm not going to tell you which song, that'd put too much pressure on it, and me."


Still, that a few lingering bars could hold up an entire album hints at Holtby's nearly-obsessive attention to detail. Working from a home studio probably doesn't help him much either, in letting songs just escape into the ether.


"There are definitely songs on this album that I'd wake up in the morning to work on and find myself still hunched over my computer 10 hours later, having forgotten to eat or even get up," Holtby says. "The story ends well though: I'm usually happy with the end products—even after thinking I'd finished them and exporting the WAVs 40 – 50 different times before actually claiming victory."
That level of devotion to getting a track just right does shine through on the finished recordings—Mitchmatic songs feel particularly well-crafted, which is to say almost effortless in their execution. Well-shaped beats and smoothly integrated samples back a rapper of rare skill: a musician who can go from taking the piss out of the textbook Whyte Ave douchebag—as he did with Mikey Maybe and The Joe on "D-Bags"—to chopping up an Ella Fitzgerald vocal sample into a full instrumental, with equally listenable merits.


Raining's long-fought finish has already found some early acclaim: the album's single, "Why Don't You Know," a witty, clever take on an overeager romantic—backed by a sample that sounds lifted from some whimsical '50s television jingle, it finds payoff by creeping into Pepé Le Pew territory—was picked up on NPR's All Songs Considered last week. Characters like that occasionally pop up in his music, but Holtby notes it's mostly himself he's putting into his songs.


"I love the idea of having an alternate persona, but to be honest 'Mitchmatic' tracks, for the most part, have been fairly true to my real self," he says. "But, I have written from perspectives of fictional characters in the past, and it can be a lot of fun. It's very freeing when you don't feel that you're having to represent yourself in every word. Some of my best verses have come from that mindset, without the social pressure that comes with being true to reality."

 

Fri, Feb 3 (8:30 pm)
With Mikey Maybe, The Joe
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