Matt and Kim

Thu 27th Jan, 2011 in Features

Matt and Kim are just a couple making some noise, and that is precisely why they are loved. Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino first met at Pratt Institute, where Johnson was studying film and Schifino was studying illustration. After he found a keyboard and “thought it looked cool”, and Schifino gave the drums a go, Matt and Kim became more than a band playing out of the attic in Johnson’s parents home, and soon took to the stages of major festivals across the globe, and became favourites in their home of Brooklyn, New York. Their story is humble, their personalities delightful, and their music joyfully heroic, but this duet just take one thing at a time, and as Johnson tells, nothing has ever really been planned.

“It was mostly accidentation”, Johnson hesitates for a moment and then breaks into laughter, “I don’t even think that is a word, did I just make up a word? Everything we do is accidental. Kim and I just work on a lot of stuff together, and music was another in a long list of things that we thought we would try, it looked like fun, and it is so we haven’t stopped.”

Their degrees haven’t gone to waste though, “It is really great that we have a background in creative fields that we can link to music, like I do all our video shoots, and Kim does all the artwork for our albums and merchandise, but I think it is important to be creative. We are still trying to work out how to use and pay back our $72,000 degree.” Matt and Kim tried to come up with a name for their band, but as Johnson tells it is very difficult, “I don’t have children, but I imagine it is what naming a child would be like. Kim and I tried for ages to think of something that would define us and be cool; I mean do you know how many Matt Johnson’s there are, because I can tell you there are loads. In the end we felt comfortable with just ‘Matt and Kim’, we thought it would be fitting, and first name basis is always good.” Johnson does reveal however that one name got pretty close, “We nearly settled on The Scream Team, which was from when Kim was little, maybe about six years old, when she had a pretend band with her brother and some friends, and I hear she was very good at playing the tennis racket.”

Their single Daylight, taken from their second record Grand, has been used in a variety of television programs, such as Gossip Girl and Community, as well as commercials, one of which is the Australian advertisement for popular chocolate bar Mars, “I like it you know, in America it was used in a Bacardi commercial, but I think if we merge the chocolate with the alcohol I would be a really happy guy.”

They have just released their third studio album titled Sidewalks, which is also the first album the pair made with a producer – Ben Allen, known for working with artists such as M.I.A, Cut Copy and Deerhunter. Johnson says the experience was different to their previous recordings, “It was weird, like Kim and I are so in sync, we hardly have to talk to one another, so to have someone else come in and give their opinion was a little on the side of ‘don’t fuck our music up’, but we kept an open mind and I think it paid off, we really enjoyed working with him and having someone else’s input and fresh perspective.”