Artist Spotlight: The Lost Noiz

By Ellie Cope

This month, The Lost Noiz AKA Matthew Berry from Oceanside is releasing 2 versions of his latest song “Heart Space.” Take a listen below, and read my interview with him at Amplified Studios about recovery, going from pop punk to reggae to deep bass, and accountability.

So tell me about the song, starting with the lyrics. What do the lyrics of the song mean?

The lyrics were all channeled. I wrote the song in one sitting on my phone, almost like a freestyle, and then that's still the exact same lyrics that we held onto for the entire process. When a comedian says the right joke, the right way you just feel like you hit the sweet spot. And it felt like, whoa. That was the sweet spot. And so when I went back and I wrote the lyrics down after I had recorded it on the phone, I realized that I had a brand new message - that I was going to keep doing music.

Matthew continued to explain that he has a large file on his computer that he calls a “dead drop” - a folder where he keeps all his music that he never shows to anyone. “Heart Space” upon its conception challenged that folder, and challenged him to come out of a 10+ year long musical hiatus.

So how long was your hiatus for music? 

My hiatus for music, uh, started in 2011 when my band played with Unwritten Law. The lead singer Scott Russo punched my guitar teacher, Steve Morris, in the face. I was just a young kid, really excited to become popular in a scene. And I then realized that I was writing songs about my girlfriends that had hurt me, that I was a closet queer trying to overcompensate and be like, this is why my pain hurts and not represent that it was the pain caused from my closeted queerness and other more vulnerable things. And I was in a genre where I wasn’t channeling a true representation of my experience - it was a lot of angst. At around age 20, I felt like I never wanted to play in a pop punk band again. I think that the transition from pop punk into a sound and style like Heart Space is the story of someone who was writing, writing but not channeling. Before I was writing for what I thought people were gonna like hearing me say. And that kept me away from music for a long time.

What's the emotion behind Heart Space?

Heart Space is all about healing with that anger. And identifying why you're angry. It’s conceptually warmer - when you're in heart space, you think that everything's happening for a lesson that you could learn. Not that everyone is out to get you, like in angst.

How did you decide on the musical and instrumental instrumentation decisions?

So the song's gonna be released two different ways. One is going to be basically Matthew wandering around Oceanside, the other is a remix. I guess the recording happened organically through the people that I felt most comfortable with.

It sounds like what you did with the recording of HeartSpace two was creating a system of accountability for you to release HeartSpace. 

That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. Can I just say that like for the whole interview? Can you just take that one sentence like,  “this is what he said?”

Yeah, no, I'm gonna quote you.

Matthew continued to explain that each instrumental track - from percussion, to bass, the vocals, the guitars, the mix/master - were all recorded at different places and with different people who he knew would push him, even softly, to release this and start making music in a real way again.

What's the most exciting part about releasing music as an underground, or indie artist? What would you say is the most challenging part about releasing music?

The coolest thing about releasing music in the era of today is that we have all the resources  right on our laptop. I interned at Mad Decent in Los Angeles, and the same things that it took a whole team to do we can do very easily just as one person. But, having a team makes everything more fun. That's why I wanted to record with other people, because I wanted to spread it around that, hey, I'm doing music and I don't wanna just keep it to myself anymore. I guess that that's the best part about releasing music is when you have a song that you care about. And there's 20 reasons why I don't like this song, and there's 20 reasons why I love this song, but I'm just gonna stick with the 20 reasons I love this song from here on out.

The coolest part about this release was that randomly I was talking to Doppe and Kokke and I was talking to them on Instagram about their deep bass music and then I asked them if they would look at my music and then I just sent. Instead of sending my music, I sent them the STEMs to every single part. And so then they wrote back and they were like, so what did you want us to do with this? And I said, like, what would be really cool if you guys thought about making it into a deep bass song. Then they came back and they had this deep bass version. In some ways their deep bass version is how I imagined the song would sound all along.

And when is that version out?

That version comes out, uh, five days later with the music video. The original version of Heart Space is out January 1st, the reggae version that me and Obed finished, but then the house version is out January 5th with a video.

Are you comfortable talking about recovery in the interview? 

Yeah, totally. My message of recovery is, uh, interesting compared to others’ definitions because mine includes the use of plant medicine. This is shown in the video - I jump into this log that's all broken out in the video and I lay back in it. And that's what it felt like before I started this version of my recovery. I felt like I was getting buried alive and I felt like every wrong I'd ever committed to the divine universe was just flashing before my eyes. And I just kept on feeling like my mom was supposed to be there and tell me that she was mad at me. After starting recovery, I finally felt acceptance for the first time. And it was like, oh my God, I accept me and I accept everything I did, and I accept everything I'm about to do, but I'm not gonna do it the way I was gonna do it before. I'm gonna do it the way that I really want to do it.

I then mentioned Matthew’s role in his community of recovery, and even his presentation on TikTok as the Jesus of Suburbia. He responded with this:

With my image I am sometimes instantly seen as a guru. People see me and speak with me and claim that I am some spiritual leader when really I am just as mad and as brokenhearted as every person that has had to make music. I'm so sad that our culture is the way that it is and that we respect the earth the way that we do, but I'm also so happy to know that there's freedom inside this torment through our own perceptions of self.