Peace to Mateo AKA: Matt Black, a Detroit producer and founder of Young Heavy Souls Records. Black launched the label in the Spring of 2011 while still attending college in Kalamzoo, MI. Black has played shows with Black Milk, Talib Kweli, Naughty By Nature and Del the Funky Homosapien. Ahead of his forthcoming release Some Strange Reason, set to be released August 31st via Young Heavy Souls, Northern Transmissions is streaming the album in it’s entirety.

Matt Black AKA: Peace to Mateo on Some Strange Reason

“Producing Some Strange Reason was a completely new process for me. The first drafts of the album were heavily inspired by trip-hop, and that influence lead to a lot of moody beats. I spent a lot of time tweaking so the music wouldn’t sound overly serious. Coming from the hip-hop world, this is the first time I’ve made an album that was free of samples. There were some growing pains, but it became pretty intuitive once I started recording different musicians jamming over skeleton tracks and rearranging their performances. This is also the first time I’ve felt confident enough to put my music on vinyl.”

After taking some time off from releasing music to focus on building the label, Black returned in 2016 with the release of Bouquet, a 10-song lo-fi beat tape. Meant to display his skills as a producer, Bouquet pays homage to Black’s boom-bap influences. In early 2017 he released the single “Thinking of You” through the internet collective éasca. The track gained the attention of popular YouTube channel Czech Vibe Sounds.

After years of sample-based production, Black delivers his first album of wholly original compositions. Although elements were tracked at various studios around Detroit, the bulk of the album was written and composed at the Young Heavy Souls studio (lovingly referred to as YHS HQ) located in Detroit’s Grand River Creative Corridor.

Peace to Mateo ‘Some Strange Reason’