We tend to think of experimental synthesiser music as an urban phenomenon: the synth as the sound of the concrete jungle, the Autobahn and underpass.

But the Melbourne-based synthesiser composer-musician Mat Watson draws his inspiration from more bucolic sources – especially those around his childhood hometown in Victoria’s Wimmera.

“For a lot of people, synth music has become very associated with a small community of people in Europe, starting with Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle and people like that,” Watson tells Limelight. “But I’ve always found that my explorations in synth music have emerged from the sounds I heard as country kid. I still gravitate to that expansive rural space, not the industrial or the urban.”

“I still gravitate to that expansive rural space,” Mat Watson. Photo supplied.

Watson came of age in the 1980s listening to his family’s records and the local AM station’s playlist of Aussie favourites. “Before the internet, before mobile phones, imagine that!” he laughs. “But I always gravitated to anything that seemed musically exciting or dangerous, which, when you’re a country kid, tends to be heavy metal of some sort.”

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