Bio and profile of Aqualung

'Yellow' man that radiates talent!

"So let's start with the basics. I am called Matt Hales. I'm 34 yrs old, British, male and according to my 2yr old son, yellow. I have been making music since I was a baby. Seems like that's what I'm for. Mercifully, I love it. I love it!



After various notverysuccessful bands and record deals I started Aqualung in 2002. I wanted to make grownup music. Write songs about this curious world that would be truthful, articulate, candid, poetic, sometimes beautiful and occasionally a bit strange. I also wanted to not be in a band anymore.



So for the record (company) Aqualung is not a band. It's the name I decided to give the music I've been making since 2002. It's written, performed, sung, produced by me. I am it's legal guardian.



Two other people are involved much of the time. Kim, my wife of nearly 10 yrs, writes some of the songs with me and stops me doing shit stuff. Ben is my brother. He writes some of the songs with me, plays guitar and bass on the records, tours with me and suggests shit stuff to do.



In the summer of 2002 Aqualung suddenly went from a lo-fi bedroom project with no deal to quite a successful thing (top 10 single, gold album) when the first song Kim and I wrote was used in a VW beetle commercial in the uk. The song was called 'strange and beautiful'. It's quite good. The amazing thing was how people reacted to this little demo. They fell in love with it. They wanted it in their lives. Something about this grownup, intimate music was really speaking to people. I decided to keep doing it.



Then I made another album which expanded on the wee lo-fi thing bringing in more colour and drama and power. It had a song on it called 'brighter than sunshine'. People liked that one too.



And all the while people from America kept calling because Aqualung songs kept occurring in their favourite tv shows and movies and on their favourite radio shows.



Then we found an American home with some no-hopers called Columbia. Mixed up my 2 albums into 1 and sold some.



Over the last few years of touring I kept trying different ways of playing this Aqualung music - concert halls with 17 people onstage but no PA, just me and a grand piano in an art gallery, sweaty rock clubs with a sweaty rock 4-piece and the occasional queen cover. They all seemed to work. They all seemed to make people happy/sad/overwhelmed/whatever they came for and it was always Aqualung.



So when it was time to make a new album I wanted to have all those flavours - from fucked up space rock to ghostly glockenspiel, from old fashioned piano songs to linear soundscaping. And I was reading Beckett and Blake and thinking about fatherhood and fate and love and death and the future, so that's in there too. So it's complex record, ambitious and full of drama.



But as it's still me and it's still Aqualung, at it's core I hope it remains truthful, candid, grownup, sometimes beautiful and occasionally a bit strange. It's called Memory Man.



From Matt"

courtesy of Matt's official website.