Clumsy with Sound: Hans Dobbratz & Matt Baldwin Record Release Concert feat. Scott Gilmore

The Philosophical Research Society welcomes innovative musical duo Hans Dobbratz and Matt Baldwin, in performance and celebration of their new album CLUMSY WITH SOUND – featuring a dreamy opening set by electro-acoustic artist Scott Gilmore!

Clumsy With Sound (subtitled “Anesthetic Asides And Alien Code From The Utopic Jail”) was conceived a decade ago when guitarist and writer Matt Baldwin, inspired by the Doors record An American Prayer, suggested to singer and songwriter Hans Dobbratz that they make a record of spoken word accompanied by instrumental pieces. Baldwin is a prolific solo artist and the author of new instant counterculture classic How to Play Guitar. Hans Dobbratz is the lead singer of Los Angeles based punk band Street Fruit, and formerly the vocalist of 90s teen sleaze act Dura Delinquent, and Physical Release, as well as a member of Belligerent Swans.

In Dobbratz’s Los Angeles apartment the pair first recorded multiple tracks of guitar and a drum machine on a 4-track cassette recorder with the intention of building from there. For the next ten years, the tape sat in a box that Dobbratz kept with him as he floated through multiple living situations in L.A. Baldwin bounced back and forth between the Monterey and San Francisco bays and, though the two often saw each other, the project sat idle.

Then, in the space that opened up during 2020/21, Dobbratz suggested that they finally finish the project. He began to write what would become the eight spoken pieces featured on Clumsy with Sound. The confusion, conflict, and possibility offered by the combined and novel experience of pandemic, riots, and wildfire provided ample force for theme and subject; the pair began to stitch together new and old pieces of music that would become, along with field recordings and live clips, the fabric of the record. The two had finally arrived at the needed mix of mood and rhythm that would honor, mutate, and wildly reimagine what they had first found vital about An American Prayer. Drawing further inspiration from the work of Gil Scott-Heron, Joe Frank, and others, Baldwin and Dobbratz went into the studio with engineer and friend, Spencer Hartling, and threaded the album together in one long day.

The resulting album is a richly layered piece of art, an archival recording of psyche projected onto all the many skylines of Los Angeles where it becomes a new spectral voice soberly recording traces of the future from a past that is not yet behind us. A series of spontaneous parables and impressions in which the optimism of eternal innocence claims its powerlessness against an ugly new machine slowly coming into view.

Praise for Clumsy with Sound:

“This sounds like the Rolling Stones on Spice.” – Spencer Hartling

“Hans’ street poet cinematics move in and out of the LA smog, as Matt circulates pulsing ragas in colors of sun-bleached dystopia. A picture forms; Unknown stories of the hidden city in exult disillusion.”– Mira Billotte, White Magic

“I could probably talk about this record for days. I love it. The backing music is pleasantly reminiscent of some of my favorite krautrock. I hope all involved know they hit a home run in my book” – Ben Blohowiak, The Silver Panthers of Luna

Opening set by Scott Gilmore, making his PRS return! –

From the heart of the strange, suburban environment known as the San Fernando Valley, a vast sprawl on the edge of Los Angeles, Scott Gilmore produces his own brand of seductive, beguiling, and dreamy pop music. His compositions are a travelogue of the timeless and gently obscure – a bunch of rarities all in one place, at one time, woven together with an accomplished sense of harmony, counterpoint and vision. Pitchfork described his album Subtle Vertigo as “a chill, whimsical listen whose Balearic compositions are filled with jazzy guitar, vintage synths, and reveal themselves to be surprisingly complex.” Experienced live, Gilmore’s music is mesmerizing and transportive – immersing the audience in a warmly analog landscape at once familiar and mysterious.

Listen to Hans Dobbratz & Matt Baldwin’s Clumsy with Sound on Bandcamp

Listen to Matt Baldwin on Bandcamp and follow on Instagram

Listen to Scott Gilmore on Spotify and Bandcamp & follow on Instagram.

Tickets: $15 (In-Person Only Event)

Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.