Album Notes

Matthew Loiacono is a musician from upstate New York. Performing original and adapted / rearranged music in the moment on mandolin, banjo, acoustic & electric guitars, drums, percussion and much more, he is mildly obsessed with marrying traditional instruments with modern technology and sounds. Known to utilize live on-the-fly looping, octave pedals, thick distortion and heavy reverb, Matthew delivers a unique, constantly evolving musical performance.

"Kentucky" was written and recorded over 22 days in February 2008 in a basement in Round Lake, N.Y. Matthew challenged himself to record the entire album using just his mandolin and his voice as the sound sources. Looping pedals, octave pedals, distortion pedals and delay pedals were all used to create the sound of a "full band".


Here’s what Mogger Edmund Frost Booth had to say about “Kentucky“:
Built upon sparse stringed instrumentation, the occasional single pounding percussion (a la Tom Waits), and sonorous harmonies that float in and out of one another flawlessly married to lyrics that read more like William Carlos Williams poems, his work is fresh and pure. It rejects common sentimentality and instead relies on emotional restraint. All of the songs on Kentucky heighten the sensory experience with articulated common speech, flawless melodies, and the simple notion that lost joys are never lost for long.

The Saratogian says:
If you took heavy guitar lines from Radiohead, added beautiful vocal harmonies from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and mixed in some mandolin from David Grisman, you would only begin to construct the artistic beauty of Matthew Loiacono’s new album “Kentucky.” It may seem curious to throw these three ingredients into one bowl, but he makes it work. The vocal melody on his track “Modest Birds” is reminiscent of the Shins, but his own unique blend of a quiet mandolin, distorted guitar, and unusually distant drums brings this song to new, artistic heights.

Scott Avett says:
Handsome.