Artistic fog delayed release of rapper’s Raining
Facing a deadline, Edmonton’s Mitchmatic knuckled down to complete one final song after 10 months of labour
One song. One measly little song. That’s all Mitchmatic needed to complete his jazzy hip-hop EP, It’s
Probably Raining. For more than 10 months, the Edmonton rapper and multi-instrumentalist tinkered with the song, opting to delay the release of the EP instead of ditching the tune altogether. Measly, my foot.
“I got in a slump and couldn’t finish it, partially because I heard it too many times,” says Mitchmatic, also known as Mitch Holtby.
“And the more time I spent working on it, the more pressure I put on myself to make it worth that amount of time. It was pretty excruciating. “I meant to release It’s Probably
Raining a year ago and it was pretty painful not being able to write a song, but still wanting to include it on the EP.”
As it turned out, all Mitchmatic needed was a deadline to help him finish the tune. Not long after he booked the gig for his EP release party — Friday, Feb. 3 at Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus — he put an end to his months of artistic misery and tackled the song. Yet the misery continues for journalists and fans — Mitchmatic knows better than to reveal the title of the tune. He’s happy, more or less, with the results, but he’s not sure others would think it was worth the frustration.
“I won’t tell because that would put too much pressure on (the song),” he says. “I put too much pressure on myself in taking 10 months to write the song, there’s no way I can be entirely happy with it. I think on first listen people will be happy with it.”
Which means we’re left playing the proverbial guessing game. Could the song in question be Discovering Pain, a sombre, violin-weeping number that tackles faith and religion, or One
Word, a soulful ode to music? Or perhaps it’s the robo-rap of Work in the
Method, featuring Cadence Weapon, or the ’50s-lounge-flavoured Why
Don’t You Know?, which might just be the most charming single you’ll ever hear about a stalker.
The accompanying video, shot by soon-to-be-leaving-edmonton-forToronto filmmaker Mike Robertson, features four different Mitchmatics pestering local actress Joleen Ballendine. The clip has racked up almost 7,000 views in less than five days — a modest yet more-than-respectable number for a local act — while the track earned the praise of All Songs
Considered, one of NPR’S more popular radio shows.
“I didn’t know what NPR was, to be honest, until they played it,” confesses Mitchmatic. (It’s the U.S. equivalent of CBC Radio.)
The 22-year-old might not be up on his media outlets — a growing problem, unfortunately, for us media types — but it might be one of his only shortcomings. Mitchmatic, who moved to Edmonton from Clearwater, B.C., in 2006, is one of those prodigious musical types who can play a range of instruments (including piano and saxophone), sing, scratch records, make beats, rap and, for all we know, build harps. Yet unlike most rappers, Mitchmatic is painfully modest and tends to dwell on his flaws in his songs. “I’m an imbecile,” he declares on Sorry, which questions his usefulness as a friend.
“I’m a really big fan of honesty in anyone, so if I can be as honest as I can be about myself, hopefully it inspires that in others,” he says. “I’ve always thought in a very rational, logical way, sometimes not even emotional whatsoever, so I think it makes more sense that things would operate better if people were more honest with each other.”
Let’s be honest, then ... it’s not surprising to learn he comes from a musical family. His mother is a music teacher. His father introduced him to jazz, while Mitchmatic’s brother, Teddy, and two sisters, Jessica and Beth, have all written and recorded their own songs.
The youngest Holtby is lucky to boast a second musical family — the young and talented members of Old Ugly Recording Co., helmed by Joe Gurba, also known as rapper The Joe. Mitchmatic’s three releases, including 2010s Two Weeks Off and 2009’s five-minute EP, It Happened, are available on the label. He plays in several bands fronted by his labelmates, including folk artist Jessica Jalbert, and he often collaborates with Old Ugly rapper Mikey Maybe — the two wrote Served Cold, one of three entries in The Journal’s recent hockey anthem contest — and The Joe. The three, informally known as The CBT, plan to release a few tracks in the coming months, and Mitchmatic hopes to start on some other projects — now that he’s finished his eight-song EP.
“I was being very hard on myself in that I wouldn’t let myself start new projects until I finished that one song,” he says. “I think I’m going to change my approach to things and try not to care about the tiny details as much.”