Matrefakt on ‘Good Times’, Liverpool Club Culture and Keeping House Music Rough Around the Edges
- Undrtone Blog
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
For Matrefakt, the line between house music’s past and present has never needed to be particularly rigid. Since forming in Liverpool in 2018, the duo have built their sound around driving drums, heavy basslines and an intentionally rough edge, while allowing their productions to move freely across different corners of electronic music.
Their latest single, ‘Good Times’, brings the brighter side of that identity to the forefront. Released via FLÂNEUR Music, the track pairs uplifting piano melodies and soulful vocals with the tougher rhythmic foundations that have become central to Matrefakt’s music.
That combination can be traced directly back to Liverpool.
“All the things you mentioned probably sum up the dance music culture of Liverpool,” they explain. “It’s a big house city that loves the classic style, so we always find ourselves leaning towards this type of track every now and again.”
The record began with its vocal sample, providing the foundation around which the pair constructed everything else. Yet despite the immediately accessible ingredients, they were conscious of retaining some grit.
“We always try to bring an energy to anything that we do and like the classic rough style of older house tracks,” they say. “It’s just a case of using sounds and textures in our tracks that feel a bit less polished and predictable.”
It is an approach rooted in the earliest days of Matrefakt. The pair initially met through mutual friends while pursuing separate musical projects and eventually found themselves sharing a studio. Long sessions working on tracks and discovering new music together gradually made a collaborative project feel inevitable.
“We spent a lot of time working on tracks together and listening to a lot of new music, so in the end it felt like starting a new project together was the right thing to do.”
Eight years later, that partnership has taken Matrefakt through releases on Shall Not Fade, Four Thirty Two, Of Unsound Mind, Warehouse Music and Peggy Gou’s Gudu Records. Their recent four track outing for the latter offered a particularly broad snapshot of the project.
“The Gudu release represented a lot of what we are and what we like,” they explain, pointing towards its “driving ‘bandy’ drums”, a term the pair use for rhythms informed partly by the indie music they grew up listening to.
That influence sits alongside “heavy basslines and vocal samples”, once again tied together by their desire to avoid making records that feel overly polished.
Their music has subsequently found its way into the hands of artists including Bicep, Skream, Peggy Gou, Mella Dee and DJ Boring, although Matrefakt are reluctant to single out one endorsement as particularly transformative.
“For us, any time someone supports our music it means a lot and gives us confidence,” they say.
Some of the most important support arrived away from the booth altogether. During the project’s early years, getting out into the scene and speaking with more established artists helped the pair understand how they wanted to approach Matrefakt both creatively and professionally.
That development was taking place against the backdrop of Liverpool, where both had spent years absorbing the city’s club culture.
“The nightlife of Liverpool has been a really big influence on the two of us,” they explain. “Going to Cream and Creamfields religiously, getting to see different artists from all over the world inspired us to want to try and be like them.”
Since then, their own touring has taken them from Creamfields and Circus to Berlin institutions Watergate and Sisyphos. Moving between those environments has reinforced how differently records can behave depending on where they are played.
“You probably learn or take something from every show you play, whether that’s good or bad,” they say. “The biggest thing we have taken from shows is probably how different crowds are in different places and what tracks might work better in Europe compared to shows in the UK.”
‘Good Times’ extends that dancefloor focus through a remix package featuring fka.m4a, DJ Love and PP. All three were already personally known to Matrefakt, but their contrasting musical approaches made them particularly appealing.
“We wanted the remixes to all have a different feel, to give a complete package to the release, and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.”
That openness to different sounds reflects the way Matrefakt continue to work themselves. Their catalogue might move between house, techno and the spaces surrounding both, but neither member appears particularly interested in narrowing the project down.
“One day we might get in the studio and be aligned with what we want to work on, another day one of us could want to make house and one make techno,” they laugh.
That unpredictability looks likely to remain part of Matrefakt’s identity. What connects the different directions is less a fixed genre than a shared foundation built through years of clubbing, producing and working alongside one another.
“Whatever we do, it will always have some sort of house influence to it.”
With ‘Good Times’, that influence is simply allowed to show itself more openly. The pianos are brighter, the vocals more uplifting and the mood firmly geared towards summer, but underneath it sits the same rough edged rhythmic character that has followed Matrefakt from those first Liverpool studio sessions to where the project stands today.
