Matt Elliott - The Third Eye Foundation

Emerging from Bristol's independent scene in the early 1990s, Matt Elliott initially developed his work under the name The Third Eye Foundation, an electronic project combining slowed-down drum'n'bass, ambient textures and noisy collages. The albums Semtex (1996), Ghost (1997), You Guys Kill Me (1998) and Little Lost Soul (2000) established The Third Eye Foundation in a dark, fragmented register, between jarring rhythms and stretched vocal samples. From the early 2000s, Matt Elliott began releasing records under his own name that are more acoustic, where guitar, voice and understated orchestrations structure lengthy songs influenced by British folk, chanson and certain Eastern European musics, as evidenced by The Mess We Made (2003), Drinking Songs (2004), Failing Songs (2006) and Howling Songs (2008), mainly issued by the French label Ici, d'ailleurs. Based in France, he has since alternated between composing, studio recordings and solo tours, during which he also revisits The Third Eye Foundation repertoire in stripped-down versions. The occasional return of The Third Eye Foundation with the album The Dark (2010) underlines the continuity between his electronic work and his folk compositions — two sides of the same experimental approach focused on repetition, melancholic atmospheres and the interplay of sonic dynamics.