The Band Maserati Wants To Score The Next Big Sci-Fi Movie

Tower’s Whitney Moore spoke to Matt Cherry, guitarist of synth and post-rock band Maserati, who are currently celebrating their 20^th anniversary, shortly after the release of their first studio album in five years, Enter the Mirror, which arrived from Temporary Residence on April 3^rd, 2020.

Talking to musicians during quarantine is turning out to be a surprisingly intimate affair, often revealing their human lives much more clearly than more formal events might, and Matt Cherry didn’t have any aversion to talking candidly about his new album, the band’s headspace these days, and the music that’s bringing him “life” during isolation. Particularly the music! Cherry’s Tower interlude concluded with a satisfyingly extensive tour of his vibrant, multi-genre vinyl record collection.

Check out our full and detailed recap below:

Matt Cherry joined us on an outside adventure from his front porch in Atlanta, waiting for an impending rain shower. The band currently hails from all over the world these days, but Cherry still enjoys aspects Southern architecture, such as having a front porch to hang out on during this quarantine period.

Cherry’s been keeping busy during quarantine, since he’s an architect during his day job, and can continue doing that job, and he feels lucky to have it. One band member has a studio and is keeping up with solo stuff, while another runs a restaurant, he says. 

Since Maserati’s been around for 20 years, it’s a little surprising, Moore said, that the band members all still have side-jobs. Cherry does feel that’s uncommon, since most of the people he knows in bands, aside from some locals like Mastodon, do have side-jobs.

Having other skills can create a cool synergy with writing music, and though Cherry used to think the process between his two fields of interest was different, he now thinks it’s “remarkably the same”, whether designing a building or writing music. That’s been a realization he’s come to over time. 

Moore wondered if there’s a similar structural approach to both, and Cherry agrees that it is something he and the band think about and is the way they write songs. They are all huge record collectors, especially Coley Dennis, and he’ll “nerd out” about a record they like, noticing things like a certain drumbeat, and they build on that to “abstract” it into something new, like when working on a structural plan.

Moore congratulated the band on releasing a new album during this difficult time and asked about the vinyl offerings. Cherry feels that a big reason they are still a band after 20 years is due to Temporary Residence and the label has thought up some awesome packaging ideas for this album, including vinyl. From reflective paper to “silver pearlescent vinyl”, the album shows a lot of love for product. 

Asked about his own record collection, Cherry says he has a French version of the Dune soundtrack from a vacation in Paris a few years ago. He has three copies of the Aphrodite’s Child album, 666. He likes to keep a couple copies since he gives them as gifts to people who don’t know the band or the record. Will he be seeing the new Dune movie? Cherry says he’s “obsessively following” it, whether via photos or announcements.

Moore brought up Cherry’s Spotify page description for Enter the Mirror, particularly the ideas of “self-reflection” and “a loss of control”. Cherry describes the band as mostly instrumental, occasionally dabbling in vocals. But vocals can emerge since there’s a “lot to write about”, if you’re frustrated by politics, and everyone in the band is “politically aligned”. A lot of that is about just having to see what’s on the news every day, even before the pandemic. Looking at the news makes him feel like we don’t have control “over anything”, he added. 

Moore noted the connection to science-fiction--that feeling of dystopia that can be found in Maserati’s work. To her, sci-fi is about the idea that “shit’s a little messed up” and that attitude seems to come out in this new album. Cherry agrees that taking that approach helps to “exorcise frustration”. Maserati’s always wanted for each record to be totally different than the last.

Last week, Cherry and Coley Dennis spoke to a German outlet about the fact that some bands make the same record “over and over again” and you love it because you know what you’re getting, but Maserati are the “opposite of that”. The loss of their former bandmate Jerry Fuchs a few years ago has driven them to make sure they are innovating on new music each time around. 

So what’s new and different on Enter the Mirror? Cherry says that a “bunch of songs on there” don’t use any delay pedal approach, but rather use straight up rock riffs, unlike many of their previous compositions. Cherry chatted further about the use of pedals, saying that guitar pedals make the playing sound “better” and “more spacey” right away, with more of a “post-rock feel”, which is where they “cut their teeth”, but this is venturing into new territory by moving away from pedals.

Talking about mixing the record with John Cogleton, Cherry says they spent four years writing the record, and their drummer Mike Albanese engineered it in his studio. But at that point they felt “too close to it” and wanted an “object opinion” in the mix. They found themselves in violent agreement by the end of the process of mixing. He observed that if four guys are mixing a record, that causes disagreement, so it was a relief to have an outside voice involved. 

Asked how he’s filling his time in quarantine, as a nerd, Cherry said that two of the band members are parents, including himself, so he’s “hanging” with his seven year old. But Chris [McNeal] and Mike [Albanese], their bass player and drummer, have been using a lot of time to write solo work. Cherry hasn’t been doing as much of that. He’s been gardening, actually.

Moore assumed the answer would be spending time with video games or comic books, but Cherry’s actually being productive instead. Reading, gardening, and parenting, as well as “lots of cooking” have been all he can manage. He cooks “anything with curry in it”. 

To mango or not to mango with curry? Both agree—do it. Cherry has.

Cherry brought up the revamping of Tower Records, and Moore explained that the original intent had been to launch at SXSW, which didn’t happen, but now the strategy is to present things for people to see on the site while they shop. 

What Moore loves is that Tower are selling records that beat Amazon prices and is giving fans other avenues for shopping that provides alternatives to Amazon, especially with strikes looming. She hopes we’ll keep the interviews up, and when quarantine is over, some badass live events.

Maserati definitely wants to do some badass live events, too! They had been planning a North American tour that would have run from March 30^th into April 2020, right during the heat of the Pandemic, in which they were going to play alongside the band Caspian. It’s a “bummer to cancel a tour”, he said, though others have it worse off, since they’ve at least been able to release a record. 

Cherry feels like they are getting better at social media than they used to be, led by bass player Chris McNeal, who’s their “social media guru” to help engage with fans. They’ve been chatting more with fans and hope to keep that up.

Asked what he hopes fans will find in this new album, Cherry says that his test of whether a song is good is whether it slots into his jogging playlist very well, and Enter the Mirror definitely does! Early on, he would jog to the rough mixes trying to make decisions and would have the occasion “aha” moment along the way.

So, what else is on his running mix? He vacillates between a “disco-ey” playlist and a “metal” playlist. He listens to a lot of Cerrone and Moroder on his playlist, he says. From the world of metal, there’s a lot of Absu, thrash metal, and their favorite new metal band is Power Trip. Cherry thinks they’re the best metal band in the last five years. He was also wearing a Sleep shirt and considers their recent record a great one for jogging. Asked if he likes Doom and Stoner metal, Cherry was definitely down for those.

Circling back to fan engagement, Cherry says the band made a bunch of t-shirts for their tour, and now they are selling them to fans instead on their website. One is a tribute to Ride the Lightning. They print on Anvil and Vela t-shirts, all “high quality garments”. 

Cherry says that Maserati is booking tours right now for this Fall that they hope will work out, but if not, they will be returning to the road in 2021 if possible, and that they will appreciate the support.

Asked what the “ideal circumstances” would be for listening to Enter the Mirror album, Cherry came back to the jogging, but also said it would make great “working music” and they are often called a great, “get shit done” band, which they’ll definitely take.

Talking about the “cinematic” aspects of Maserati music, Cherry agreed with Moore that they definitely “intend” to sound like music from a movie. They have had some “bites” on commercial licensing and have done okay with that. They’ve “gone out on a limb” to do film scores before, but it’s a “niche” thing that is hard to break into.

As far as directors they’d love to work with, Denis Villeneuve for Dune would be their dream. Though they seem to talk about it “all” as a band when it comes to sci-fi, the recent film Invisible Man, by the same director as Upgrade, is a little sci-fi and he found it very impressive. Though Upgrade is amazing, and a standout in Cherry’s mind. He also loved Annihilation. Another film they talked about recently was Day After Tomorrow, which was surprisingly good.

Asked whether he’s a sci-fi reader, Cherry says he is, and he’s re-reading Dune, of course, right now. He wants to re-watch the 1984 version, and also anything that’s been made in between. He loved The Outsider, too, as well as Event Horizon. He’s into space sci-fi, dystopian, but the “neo-slasher” stuff is particularly appealing, like It Follows. Cherry loved the Blade Runner update and thinks the score on it was “phenomenal”.

Asked about what the band listens to, Cherry said that they made a playlist for their record label when their album was released called “good vibrations”. They are into a lot of “prog rock, electronic disco, techo-metal”. Also Brian Eno’s work, of course, and Lindstrom, who Cherry feels is “one of the better electronic musicians out there”. He listens to a lot of Lindstrom.

Talking more about Lindstrom, he said that one of the songs that Lindstrom put out about five years ago “had a chord progression where the keys changed in the course of thirty measures then looped back”. So that inspired them to write a song that had a lot of measures to it. Drumbeats, too, attract their attention, which they loop in, alter, and update in various ways, and make “their own”.

So who would Matt Cherry want to direct a music video for Maserati? He said he’d definitely like the director of Upgrade and Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell, to do it.

Asked what Tower Record’s famous motto, “No Music, No life”, means to him, Cherry says that he “can’t do anything without some sort of soundtrack” and his work drawing has been inspired by listening to Throbbing Gristle all morning.

Things got even more exciting when Cherry agreed to take us inside his office and studio, (well, partly due to a sudden downpour), featuring a Telecaster Deluxe, his favorite guitar, on display, and he revealed some intricate architectural design sheets on buildings in progress. He’s also been listening to Skinny Puppy today, he added.

Cherry’s office posters are a variety of Maserati, including one from China, where they actually played in Wuhan, which had excellent street food. He does a lot of design and artwork for the band himself, which he showed off for us. A bunch of their shows with Mono are also commemorated by posters in his office.

An uber-fascinating tour of Cherry’s substantial record collection then ensued, starting with their own new Maserati album, of course. Maserati’s bass player is in the band Vincas, with a new record dropping in two weeks, called Phantasma, and Cherry did the artwork for them. 

The tour of the collection included:

A David Lee Roth solo record; David Axelrod’s Earth Rot, which came out in the early 70’s as a psychedelic spoken-word record about the end of the world feels relevant right now. There are a bunch of Cerrone records, including III. On Side 1, “Supernature” is a disco song, but in the middle, it has a three minute drum solo, but then it goes into what sounds like “Dark Side of the Moon”, Cherry explained.

He has the William Basinsky boxed set called the Disintegration Loops from a composer who used loops of old symphonies being recorded, which were disintegrating as it was happening.

“You are listening to music being destroyed and it is so cool.”, Cherry enthused.

His record collection also includes Tangerine Dream, of course, Sonic Youth, Shellac, and Scorpions. The first Scorpions record sounds like Black Sabbath, Cherry insists.

Then there’s Demis Roussos, singer of the band Aphrodite’s Child, on his solo album. Rainbow, as well as Ritchie Blackmore from Deep Purple, with the album Rising. The best song on Rising is “A Light in the Black”, according to Cherry.

Also included: Psychic Paramount, mastering their records like they are “breaking everything”. The band opened for Maserati, and always started the set with a “wall of noise”. Lots of Pink Floyd, and even more Pink Floyd, lined Cherry’s shelves.

Coming upon some Caspian records, Cherry explained that the Boston band who play a lot of live shows, share an interesting history with Maserati, because they opened for Maserati in Boston 16 or 17 years ago. Since then, they’ve gotten “huge”. When they asked Maserati if they’d like to “hang out again”, on their 2020 tour, the answer was of course, yes.

My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is a record everyone should have Cherry insisted, and if they don’t, “there’s probably something wrong with them”. The last record he showed us was Ministry’s Land of Rape and Honey, which is one of his favorite records, too.