Hearsay

Hearsay is the solo project of Matt Picola, combining bass and sampler-driven music with a playful but nihilistic worldview. With a background in creative writing, Matt crafts introspective and ideologically charged lyrics that critique modern society and capitalism. Musically, Hearsay features distorted, self-destructive automated rhythmic textures paired with post-punk bass lines. The initial demo offering titled “A Day” was recorded in one take and mixed in one day, in LA with Adam Laidlaw, and released in September 2024, with further elaborations to come this year.

His tracks explore themes such as “Waves of Void,” discerning the willful ignorance required to rent property and work; “Surreal Feel,” talking about subconscious desires of conformists; “Song and Seed,” discerning the human imperative to procreate as capital itself reproducing through labor; “On a List,” bemoaning government surveillance; “Days Go Bye,” existing as an economic grain of sand on a beach; “Checkerboard,” about experiencing subjectivity in a technological society overdetermined by capital; “War,” women having to endure being commodified the moment they leave the home; “Boiling Pigs,” about succumbing to the urge to eviscerate authority figures; and “Bang My Vein,” about the ubiquity of dopamine addiction.