The Mattson 2 official site | The Mattson 2 on Facebook

If you could soundtrack the jangle of the sea and the jazz of the surf, The Mattson 2 would most certainly be the composers. The identical twin guitar and drums duo are truly a marvel of jazz-rock orchestration and arrangement. The duo shimmers and shakes with the soaring modern wizardry of Jared Mattson’s untamed, layered guitars and Jonathan Mattson’s tribal jazz hard-bop drumming. They channel the gorgeously hypnotic gods of surf, sun, and neon-punk- jazz of our modern universe, evoking evolved realms of experimentalism, rhythm, and story. The identical twin’s deep telepathic kinship navigates colorful forms of beautiful weirdness and exotic landscapes of layered improvisation, transcending the concept of modern musical performance. They have toured relentlessly throughout Japan, China, Brazil, Paris, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, and the United States. The Mattson 2 have Bachelor’s and Masters of Fine Arts degrees in music from University of California San Diego, and University of California Irvine respectively. Mattson 2 have collaborated/shared the stage with Chaz Bundick, Toro Y Moi, Badbadnotgood, Ray Barbee, Tommy Guerrero, Cornelius, Chocolat & Akito Katayose, Silver Apples, Money Mark, Thomas Campbell, Nicole Mitchell, Mark Dresser, Farmer Dave Scher, and Tortoise members Jeff Parker, John Herndon, and John McEntire.

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New York City based Cassandra Jenkins, a songwriter who “knows how to leave an impression” with “elegantly celestial climaxes, emerald green-glowing guitar work”(P4k), has just released her much anticipated first full-length album, Play Till You Win.

The cosmos in Cassandra’s self proclaimed “Cosmic American” songs are both macro and micro, within and without you, as a certain Beatle would say. Ghosts of All Things Must Pass haunt the record’s melodies as a constant stylistic lodestar, with nods woven throughout to Lee Hazelwood’s Hollywood-and-Vine country surrealism or Angeles Badalamenti and David Lynch’s work for Julie Cruise, resulting in a tapestry that is “tender and trance like” (Interview Magazine).

What makes her new collection of songs stand out from fellow acolytes of psychedelic burritos and dusty journeys through gilded palaces of sin, is that her vision and scope of influences are broad, idio-syncratic and ever-changing. Much like Gram Parsons, one of several patron saints lovingly looking over and bestowing their grace over Play Till You Win, Cassandra uses the clarity and smoldering sense of longing conveyed by her “smokey vocals”(NPR) to transcend her urban surroundings in order to connect to a deeper, quintessentially American vein of expression that showcases a sophisticated art heart and a mature point of view about the masks and complications of desire.