I’ll be headed up to Chicago, Minneapolis and the University of Wisconsin this week for some solo shows:

June 19th, Chicago: http://do312.com/event/2013/06/19/5-show-sure-fire-groove-takénobu-brainchild

June 21st, Minneapolis: http://www.dakotacooks.com/event/late-night-feat-matthew-santos-takenobu/

June 25th, University of Wisconsin (open to the public):http://tourism.rfchamber.com/events/details/matthew-santos-takenobu-concert-4742

Someone asked me a while ago to do the sheet music for “To the Stars” and I finally got around to doing it! Here it is for free for your cello playing convenience: To the Stars

Check out these new videos from our album release show at the Earl last month!

We’ve just printed our very first run of T-shirts. They came out really well, with an awesome design by our violinist Brian. Check ‘em out!

The new album “Climactica” will be done soon, the tracks are finished and there’s just some logistical stuff to finish up (artwork, final mastering touches, etc.) before it will be ready for our independent release. It’s a much bigger sounding project and I’m really excited about it. This is the first album that involves a lot of sampled beats I did by recording acoustic percussive sounds from my cello, putting them into my trusty Akai MPC 2000XL, making beats, and then letting songs evolve from the feel of those rhythmic productions. This is the first album that will feature Brian on violin, and he’s a pretty major asset, and a major contributor to the overall sound and scope of the project.

On the album I adapted a couple of songs from the Momotaro instrumental project into fully produced band songs with lyrics, finally recorded songs that have been in the works for a few years, and even wrote a song in Japanese. It’s a 9 track album, but somehow it feels like a lot more than that. I hate the idea of filler on an album, so this is a collection of only the best material from the past year and a half or so.

As has been the case since the inception of Takenobu a single definable genre escapes us, which has been as much of a hindrance as it’s been a blessing. In my opinion this album is very “poppy” and is probably most easily classifiable as “indie pop” in that the songs are on the upbeat and catchy side, but I’m sure that most of the people that will like it aren’t pop music fans, which leaves us in the nether world of uncategorized music that an unidentifiable demographic of people like, which makes it difficult to market.  I’m just glad that more and more people are starting to take interest.

On a more depressing note, a good friend of mine, and an even better friend of our drummer John recently took his own life, which is something that has affected everyone we know here very deeply. Our friend Jeremy was an incredibly electric personality, who burned much brighter than most, and sadly had to burn out far too soon. I wrote a song for him, to deal with the incredible grief of the situation, which I’d like to share here. This isn’t a song that will go on the album, so this isn’t a preview, just a song that means something to me and maybe will be meaningful to some of you.

I hope that everyone has a happy holiday weekend, is able to enjoy themselves, and has something to be thankful for. Be safe and stay tuned for the album release, which will happen in the next few weeks!

We’re headlining the Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta this Friday, May 18th. Here’s the poster that Brian made:

We’ve been on a long hiatus from performing, and this will be our first show in 6 months. We’ve spent that time working out new material that is much louder, fuller, and a lot more rock and roll.

I’m very excited to debut the new songs, and to play a louder show with a full drum set. A lot of the new sound is accomplished by having a lot more layers and loops, both from myself and from Brian on the violin. The added layers make for a fuller more lush string sound that makes it possible for us to play with a full drum set played at full volume.

In the past when I’ve played with drummers, they’ve always had to hold back in some way, due to the mellower nature of the cello. We’ve managed to solve that problem by adding lots of layers to create the volume, and also by looping some sampled percussion sounds from the cello in order to make a more rhythmic background to things.  I think that the character of the sound is still very well preserved, but the scale has increased a lot. We’ve gone from a mellower acoustic vibe to a more full on and epic sound.

We don’t have anything recorded yet, but I hope to get some rough tracks together within the next couple months.

The NEW instrumental album is now available for download! It’s my instrumental adaptation of the Japanese children’s story Momotaro, about a boy born from a peach who grows up to save his village. I’m very excited and proud of this project, as it’s the first comprehensive narrative I’ve done and I’m very pleased with the way it came out.