Matt Carlson pt.1 - Early solo work, plus Portal live sets

Before he was a prolific modular synth experimenter, releasing solo music on such labels as NNA and Draft, before he was one half of the synth + bass clarinet Thrill Jockey duo Golden Retriever, before he was in Parenthetical Girls and did much of the orchestral arrangements for their Entanglements album, Matt Carlson was basically your average prolific music-obsessed intellectual merv. We've already covered his high school output with the band Portal, but this post is about the various home recording projects he worked on in the post-Portal years.

He was always working on something. There was Aerboxe, an instrumental experimental synth project, and Vertex, which I believe was a concurrent project, a duo consisting of Carlson and The Past drummer Matt McLemore. In the link below, I've included 3 songs from each of these projects. I'm guessing they're from around 2002.

In 2005, Matt self-released a solo CD-R, exploring his interest in pop by way of Jim O'Rourke on his debut solo album, Making Time, which features Matt singing, and playing acoustic guitar, synth, drums, dulcimer, and more. This was the first release on his own Bucket Factory Records. You can see what Matt's up to these days by going to bucketfactory.com.

Download Making Time, plus songs by Aerboxe and The Vertex here.

BONUS!

Download three live Portal sets from 1999 and 2000 here.