Matti Bye Pays Tribute to Tom Waits, Haunted Carnivals on New Album

Matti Bye

Photo ANDERS THESSING

While Matti Bye is best known for his award-winning film scores and one hell of an Anna von Hausswolff collab, the Swedish pianist/composer has also released a wealth of mood-altering solo material. The latest of which is This Forgotten Land, a looming Tona Serenad LP that channels everything from eerie midways to the manic Swordfishtrombones era of Tom Waits.

Here’s what Bye had to say about its latest single, followed by a few other previously leaked selections that’ll officially hit shops on November 3rd….

Circus music has always inspired me—the strange romantic mood you are drawn into when you hear old merry-go-rounds, music boxes, player pianos, calliope, mechanical instruments, small tivoli’s, and amusement parks and abandoned places like Coney Island.

I’m very fascinated by what music made by ghosts would sound like. Maybe it’d be filtered in some strange, distorted way, blurred from a distance… like a memory of something you forgot coming back… hidden cities under the water… with a sea horse orchestra playing.

Matti Bye | This Forgotten Land

Matti Bye
This Forgotten Land
(Tona Serenad, November 3rd)

1. Melt
2. Absence
3. Of Dawn
4. Silence
5. Into the Haze
6. Galloping Waves
7. Loneliness of Earth
8. Piano Street
9. Cascading Sun
10. Forest in the Sea
11. Teo