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Vancouver Artist Matías Roden Combines Uptempo Synth-Pop Production with Dark Lyrics on “Great Escape”

April 16, 2024
William Brookson
Latest posts by William Brookson (see all)

Matías Roden is a Peruvian-Canadian singer-songwriter living in Vancouver, BC. After performing in cover bands and writing for others in the city’s indie pop scene (including landing college radio play for one of his cuts), Matías began developing his own material as an artist. Drawing from classic British synth-pop combined with a modern, sample-based production sensibility and unflinchingly personal lyrics, Matías wrote and produced over a dozen demos in his makeshift bedroom studio. Those caught the attention of acclaimed singer/songwriter/producer Louise Burns and shortly after he was signed to Vancouver’s Light Organ Records/604 Records. 

New single, “Great Escape,” is sung from the perspective of depression itself, telling a depressed person they’ll never get over them, like a twisted love song. Written during COVID while recovering from a brain injury, Matías channeled the feelings of darkness from that time into the song’s lyrics but made sure to retain a twinge of hope in its rousing production.

The official music video was shot by Peter Faint, a friend of Matías’ who has worked as an editor on shows for Netflix, Adult Swim and others. His incredible energy as a filmmaker was exactly what Matías wanted for the propulsive song’s visuals.

1. What did you enjoy most about the recording process of this new release?
This was the first song I demo’d for my first album, and it was the first song that I’d ever had professionally produced (by Louise Burns) in a big, expensive studio. It felt like going to Music Production School 101, it was a marvel to see how Louise took the elements from my demo and replaced them and added a billion things, making it sound so much bigger and better. Hearing that transformation was my favourite part of the process.

2. Share a nugget of advice that has resonated with you most over the years.
Make music you want to hear. Make music that you are eager to hit ‘play’ on. There is no point to making anything that you won’t love because you’re going to be spending a ton of time recording it, performing that music, promoting it online, it’s going to take up a big chunk of your life so why not do something you genuinely enjoy? Plus, I think as a listener you can tell when an artist is really in love with the material they’re singing or playing.
3. Who would be your dream artist/band to co-headline a tour with?
Orville Peck would definitely be top of my list, it’d be a dream come true, not just for his music which I’ve loved for years and has this cinematic melancholy that I adore and he really plays with his image really well (for me music and visuals are inseparable), but also because he’s an out and proud gay man like myself and people like him, seeing an openly gay pop star like that, have shown me that it’s possible to do what you love in front of the public and be authentically yourself. Growing up in hyper-conservative Peru like I did in the 2000s, that did not always seem like a realistic thing to aspire to.
4. What sets your music apart from others in your genre?
My music is what I would call singer-songwriter music, I write everything myself on piano, but given a sheen of big pop production drawing from a lot of British synth-based pop in the late 80s and 90s. I write a lot of songs from a really dark perspective–“Great Escape” was inspired by me imagining depression itself singing to a depressed person, for example–and with lyrics that are often about mental health and existential questions, and I think that sort of lyrical theme, but with a production that has massive synth riffs and melodies that are written to be really catchy is something different.
5. Tell us what your favourite song is at the moment and why.
My favourite song right now is a track called “Angel of Business” by an artist from New York called Grace Ives. It sounds to me like avant garde bedroom pop, it’s incredibly catchy without sacrificing any intricacy in terms of the production, it’s like a little universe in a song but feels very intimate.

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