Welcome to Grippo Music and thank you for taking the time to check out my first solo project. "Circuits" has been one year in the making and many years in the coming.

I've been drumming since I was a teenager. I've played all types of music including Jazz, Hip Hop, Electronica, Hi-Life, Afro-Beat, R&B, and Rock. I love playing and listening to each genre. Rock has raw energy. Jazz stimulates the mind and heart. Dance music makes people move! "Circuits" has a little bit of all these styles in it.

Work for "Circuits" started in the summer of 2002. I began collaborating with long time friend and fellow musician Erik Linkquist. By fall, Erik had composed and arranged 5 pieces for jazz sextet based on my basic song structures.

In November, I went into the studio with the horn section of Realistic and pianist Michael Bluestein. Realistic is a popular group that has been leading the live electro-jazz scene in San Francisco. Michael is a respected bay area musician who has performed with Will Bernard and Boz Scaggs. These musicians recorded Erik's arrangements and added their own improvisations. They provided me with the raw material for "Circuits".

Over the course of the next 6 months, I chopped, spliced, and blended sound from those performances into a new context of electronic beats, hyper-edited drumming, and electronic textures. Other musicians contributed along the way. H.O.P. from hip-hop group The Icons added his incredible turntable chops. Jason Muscat played all the funky electric bass lines that I couldn't handle playing myself. Errol Cooney, who has performed with Beyonce and Sheila E, added some tasty rhythm guitar. And, of course, I couldn't resist adding some of my own playing to the mix.

By summer of 2003, Victor Owens and I had completed the final mix and mastering at Digisonic Studios in Berkeley. Tomoko Shiratori completed the design for the album art and this web site.

So...

Enjoy the music, let me know what you think, and stay tuned...Matt