Traversing by Matmat

How is it that a person comes to a new place and finds things both terrifyingly foreign and wholly familiar--unknown, but comforting?

Usually when we think of travel, we’re thinking of getting on a plane or going to a new city or country. But Traversing is about the motion that underpins all of existence, the movement that never really stops.

The eerie sounds of the handpan and the kalimba are woven throughout these tracks of instrumental hip hop, composed of layered samples and old school breakbeats.

Inspired by three years of travel between New York, France, and Benin (West Africa), this is a reckoning with the tension between the mystery of the new and the joy of finding commonality among difference.

There is something hypnotic about finding where the old and new overlap, where things are the opposite of expected but also completely recognizable.

But Traversing has few words other than these. Some things must be left to the imagination… just like the movement that created it.

Producer/beatmaker based in Benin, West Africa. Globe trotter and crate digger. Loves to mix influences and samples from different places and eras and explore motion through music.