A kooky love letter to food featuring Matt’s 22-piece BIPOC and gender diverse choir/orchestra and his signature maximal-minimalist sound will drop on Wednesday 20 July.
Two-time QMA winner Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra returns with kooky new single release Eat The World, showcasing his award winning signature maximal-minimalism and uncanny ability to blend found objects, orchestral scale, world instruments, and DIY punk ethos to create otherworldly music that has enraptured music lovers, musicians “who know” and audiophiles with an offbeat sense of adventure.
Taking a breath from his acclaimed music for social advocacy, such as QMA winning Welcome To The Neighbourhood which tackled systemic racism and refugee rights, Eat The World changes gears to a cheekier and whimsical celebration of delicious food – highlighting cuisine from Asia and his ancestral roots of Taiwan.
The creation story of Eat The World follows: after discovering he’d eaten his way to a Homer Simpson-level fatty liver, from a diet of tonkotsu ramen, fried chicken and potato chips, Matt was put on doctor’s order to eat clean. Deep in the mania of his hunger pangs, Matt began composing straight from the belly, a song that captured the raw yearning for crunchy, hearty, juicy eats.
Using instruments that mirror the cacophony of a frenzied kitchen and wild feast, Eat The World is a buffet of sound, with culinary utensils, rhythmic chip munching, never before combined instruments of hulusi, t’rung, bansuri, gamelan, mbira, musical saw, and even a vacuum cleaner to convey the hoovering of a voracious appetite — all played by Matt (with strings performed by Flora Wong).
The piece also features the voices of his 22-piece live alt-orchestra (also known as Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra) — an ensemble of BIPOC, First Nations, disabled, non-binary and trans artists, underpinned by community-minded inclusivity, anti-racism and gender diversity, have just this year have enthralled crowds at Qld arts mecca QPAC, Brisbane Powerhouse, and the SLQ’s 120th Anniversary Celebration.
Bolstered by his second Queensland Music Awards win this year, Matt’s mythos as an imitable and forward-thinking music auteur who creates unpredictable and exquisite music way off Australia’s well trodden ‘indie’ path, is rapidly snowballing with comparisons to genre-defying multi-instrumentalists and composers like Cosmo Sheldrake, Mid-Air Thief, Alabaster DePlume and Shugo Tokumaru, with the live presence of Polyphonic Spree.
The accompanying music video is directed by Matt and features Jaguar Jonze, Quan from Regurgitator and Sachém having meals with Matt. Showcasing Matt’s dream cheat days eating his favourite foods, propelled into a chorus of all 22 Obscure Orchestra members in vivid colour, roaring together.
Bravo Brisbane 