About

The Minor Arcana—pseudonym of one Mr. Matthew Landis—had a mind to absorb gobs of music from a very early age, and the good fortune to be exposed to a breathtaking panoply of it. Before entering kindergarten, he soaked in Bach, Vivaldi, Brubeck and Amhad Jamal from his father and grandfather’s record collections, while his mother fed him a steady diet of ’60s soul classics; what’s more, his older cousins were subjecting him to ’80s rock as it emerged on MTV. At an age when most kids are learning to read, Landis was fast becoming fluent as a jazz & classical listener: obsessing over Stevie Wonder & Aretha Franklin; dressing up as Bruce Springsteen for Halloween.

Enthralled at age six by a pianist’s rendering of a Beethoven concerto at a local concert, Landis demanded piano lessons; by his eighth birthday, he was deemed too advanced for the neighborhood’s best teachers. He was already immersing himself in whatever rock music he could find with an audible piano part to bang out, drawn in particular to the early records of Springsteen and Elton John. His older cousins—now, his babysitters—took him in more divergent directions: one pointing him toward Zeppelin–Hendrix–Allman Brothers; the other, into punk, hardcore, & rap byways. His older brother steered him into Pantera & King Crimson, whose musical wild–goose chases delighted the nascent composer. His new piano teacher got him excited about Glenn Gould, and ignited his interest in Baroque and late Renaissance keyboard music—provoking an (inevitable) obsession with J.S. Bach. That same teacher was responsible to introducing a young Landis to legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans—& his impressionistic approach to harmony. At the same time, his young mind was also contending with early records by Nine Inch Nails, Bad Brains & NWA—& an (equally inevitable) obsession with The Clash.

London Calling at first confused Landis, who was still just a tween: “I couldn’t figure out if I loved it or hated it, but Strummer’s personality was captivating, and I listened to the record endlessly trying to figure out what the hell this band was. Eventually, I realized the scattershot nature of the record, the insane diversity of it; the way it seems about to come unhinged & yet completely tight; the way it bridges dark comedy & apocalysm with a sense of outrage, the way it managed to teeter on the line of desperation & hope—and the way the music just sounded punk as a fuck, even where it was reggæ or R&B or even pop—was just so inspiring. The more I read about the Clash and explored their records, the more I admired what Strummer stood for—politically, & artistically. By the time I got into politics late in high school, the deal was sealed: Strummer was untouchable.”

Landis began to define his own identity as an artist in his late teens, as he started to play and write with guitarist Carl Cheeseman and multi–instrumentalist Matt Coslop, both of whom remain two of his closest friends & collaborators to this day. They would gather in Coslop’s garage to jam, to write, &, eventually, to record—challenged to improve (& occasionally shamed) by Coslop’s more musically–seasoned father and his coterie. “Everything I am as a musician & vocalist today was formed in that garage,” Landis says now. “My style as an improviser, as a composer, as an arranger—were all developed there. In a way, Coslop is sort of the silent producer of everything I do.” Cheeseman’s current role is even more direct: “The relationship Carl and I have can’t be quantified in terms of his being a great player. It’s beyond that. It’s trust—that if I write something, he gets it. I can trust him to communicate on my behalf.”

At 15, Landis wrote his first pop song, “Flicker Away”—the first of many he would record with Coslop and his sundry cohorts. Landis continued to absorb more music, and he increasingly was driven to research the sources of every favorite artist’s roots. Thus he would start with glam rock (Iggy) and art rock (Patti) and eventually work his way back to Mississippi blues (Wolf). By 18, he had discovered the kind of songwriter he aspired to be in the work of Elvis Costello. “I was fascinated by what a completely original writer he was,” Landis recalls. “So smart and so damned angry, but so catchy.” As he expanded his vocabulary in Coslop’s garage, he intensively studied records by Wilco, Jeff Buckley, and Radiohead. “I loved those records so much because they were weird, artistic, experimental, & literate—and yet, still pop,” remarks Landis. “But it was pop music with dark overtones—with anger; with noise.”

By that point, Landis was also studying philosophy and political science at Stockton College, later enrolling in a UPenn Masters program in poetry and cultural theory. No longer content with exclusively musical exploration, he dove into the Weimar Republic, Dadaism, & the Situationist movement—writers like Brecht, Benjamin, & Debord; filmmakers like Fritz Lang & Jean–Luc Godard; poets like Kurt Schwitters, Louis Zukofsky, & Charles Bernstein (with whom he studied). These intellectual pursuits led Landis to another prime object of obsession: the composer Kurt Weill—yet another artist who managed to blend many subversive and experimental influences into an œuvre of masterful songcraft.

Landis stepped out of the garage to pick up regular gigs with a series of standout bands like the Blue Method, Disciples of Groove, and Bosco & Peck. He made still more recordings with Coslop and started hitting the Philly club scene with his own original material. The Philadelphia Inquirer raved: “His striking voice and very apt lyrics alternately made the crowd roar at points and look into themselves, especially ‘All That We Are’, a beautifully haunting song […]” Around this time, Landis hooked up with emerging folk songwriter Joshua Park—at the time, strictly a solo performer—and convinced Park to let him put together a backing band. Those efforts led to Park’s breakthrough 2007 record One Wish, which garnered strong reviews and several years of regular airplay on WXPN.

Landis then stumbled upon the World/Inferno Friendship Society—and, more fortuitously, the World/Inferno Friendship Society stumbled into him. “I was just floored the first time I heard them,” Landis says. “They were name–checking Dante Aligheri and characters from Brecht & Weill plays in their songs. I used to call them ‘the next only band that matters,’ because I had the same feeling hearing them the first time I heard London Calling.” World/Inferno had recently lost its first two keyboardists, and through a mutual friend, Landis got an opportunity to regale frontman Jack Terricloth with a medley of songs from Charlie Brown television specials, alongside a few World/Inferno tunes he’d worked out on his own. Terricloth’s response: “How’d you like to lose a bunch of money and maybe a bunch of your friends?” Having no money and “too many acquaintances,” Landis gladly accepted the proposition. Subsequently, he spent a significant portion of 2008 & 2009 touring the U.S. and Europe with World/Inferno, winning over the group’s notoriously devout fans as the new “menace at the keyboard” (WAIH-FM), and forging deep musical ties with his new bandmates, including iconic drummer Brian Viglione (The Dresden Dolls, Nine Inch Nails).

Along the way, Landis was plotting his own masterwork, a full–length debut he would eventually entitle Emotional Alchemy. Composed and meticulously orchestrated by Landis, the record is the fullest fruition yet of Landis’ long collaboration with Cheeseman on guitar. Viglione readily agreed to play drums for the record, along with contributions from World/Inferno hornsection staples Peter Hess and Ken Thompson.

In the best tradition of his musical heroes, Landis has set out to make a record that marries its experimental proclivities with pop sensibilities. “The title,” he says, “refers to the lies, mythologies, spells, & incantations we fashion in order to cope with a culture that is increasingly saturated with spectacle, inauthenticity, & forsaken promise. It’s about how we struggle with alienation & exploitation—as well as heartbreak. ‘Emotional alchemy’ is the process through which we convince ourselves that hope is warranted.”

2011 finds Landis embarking on the most exciting & ambitious period of his admittedly young career as a musician. He’s been keeping busy collaborating with notable Philly-based artists like Ross Bellenoit and Liz Fullerton, and he’s been continuing to head out on the road with the World/Inferno Friendship Society intermittently throughout the year. Landis plans on following up the release of Emotional Alchemy with a promotional tour in the near future.