This Sunday, July 3rd, 2026, we are returning to Coaxial Arts in Downtown Los Angeles for another installment of our concert series, Plastics Dept. Headlining the show are two unique voices in the realm of experimental and ambient electronic music—Mike Nigro and Matthew D. Gantt. Friends, collaborators, and inveterate rad people all-around, Mike and Matthew have developed their artistic voices through a history of interactions across the world, incorporating experiences with people, places, and creative technologies to arrive at their individual perspectives on electronic music.

Mike Nigro runs the largely cassette-tape-focused label Oxtail Recordings, now in its 12th year of releases, with a catalog that includes a vast range of aesthetics, practices, and perspectives from an international cohort. Placing their focus on "ambient noise and broken songs," Oxtail's commitment to curating a wide range of artists in the world of ambient and experimental sound seems to mirror Nigro's own energized engagement in an international community of DIY music making. Taking a spin through his own synth-drenched tunes, it's easy to hear the influence of people and spaces across the meditative structures he creates—lush electronic timbres and evocative field recordings bring together a sense of being-there in a way that reveals a contemplative and emotional interiority caught in joyful exchange with a dynamic world of sound.

Matthew D. Gantt appeared on the Oxtail catalog with 2017's Isomorphs, a wild trip through virtual spaces, MIDI-mediated realities, and Matthew's decidedly playful yet detailed studio practice. Gantt's work takes many forms—both literally and figuratively—and often centers on his audiovisual practice, which cultivates nonlinear systems of generative sound and video in dynamic causal relationships. His kinetic sound installations present virtual spaces using 3D animation software, surreal environments wherein rendered objects interact in real time, unfolding emergent musical structure defined by simulated physics of their digitally embodied forms. The technical depth of the systems Gantt creates betrays his innate sense for whimsy in both visual and sonic material; immersed in one of his installations or performances, with 3D planets, Macbooks, and MIDI violins soaring overhead, it's easy to find oneself in a slipstream of daydreamt possibilities, a quiet humor which reorganizes the real.

We're overjoyed to be bringing both Mike and Matthew to Plastics Dept to share their work as part of their now ongoing West Coast tour. Squirming with anticipation for the sprawl of light and sound sure to commence, we reached out to interview both Mike and Matthew just before they caught a westbound plane, tracing their history together and their unique perspectives on electronic composition. Read the full interview below!

Perfect Circuit: Hello Matt and Mike! Thanks so much for joining in on this triangular interview. We can't wait to have you here in LA for our third Plastics Dept. concert at Coaxial.

How did you two first cross paths, and what led to bringing Matthew on to the Oxtail Recordings crew for Isomorphs back in 2017?

PC: How did this upcoming west coast tour come together? Besides Plastics Dept in Los Angeles, what other shows or cities are you both looking forward to?

Matthew: In mid-'19, Mike moved out to Sydney for a job, and I headed upstate to start a doctoral program. Since then, we've been finding moments of overlap in our travel schedules as a jumping off point to play some shows, which took us to Europe last year, and fortunately, the west coast for this one. I'm moving to Prague this Fall, so I'm really excited to spend some proper time out west for the first time before heading over. Incredibly psyched for the whole run—we're excited to see some old friends in PDX, but also really looking forward to spending some time in LA and the Bay Area for the first time.

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[Photo Credit: Marcus Miller]

PC: Oxtail Recordings is primarily focused around creating cassette releases, which strikes me as particularly situated within DIY music culture and in-person relationships. Mike, considering you're running the label from Sydney, Australia, how do you approach organizing the international cohort and community that Oxtail represents around cassette releases?

Mike: That's absolutely right, and that's something I really value and want to continue to represent. I've been in Sydney for seven years now, and moving countries has made me realize that I have a particularly American DIY idea of what it means to be a creative person, and community is a huge part of that.

When I moved, the thought of stopping the label never crossed my mind, I knew I'd want to become a part of the music community where I am. The first Australian release was a comp called Undercurrents which is a great sampler of primarily Sydney-based experimental artists. The latest is Desire Path, a gorgeous synth-and-vibraphone album from Melbourne artists Zoltan Fecso and Anna Morley, which is the label's first vinyl record.

Oxtail has also always been a part of an online scene as well, so coordinating with folks internationally has always been part of the project. I don't have any particular method for that, just a lot of emails.

PC: Running a label is, among other things, a curatorial project. Mike, do you define a certain conceptual or aesthetic frame for the work presented under Oxtail, or how do you otherwise approach the process of curation?

Mike: Sonically, the core of the label is ambient electronic music, with lots of room to explore within and beyond that. But there are lots of outliers in the catalog, and I think what ties everything together more than a particular sound is a particular feeling, which I think you picked up on with your previous question. This is music made by people who care deeply about exploring sound and creativity in a curious and thoughtful way, and creating and sharing this type of music in this way is only one manifestation of their way of interacting with the world. Low Flung's writeup for his Oxtail album Full Stop articulates this beautifully.

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[Photo Credit: Daniel O'Toole]

PC: In addition to synthesis, you often invoke field recordings and other organic textural elements amidst the flurry of electronic timbres—for example, in the track 'Argyle Place Park' from 2023's Low Light, we hear environmental elements like chirping insects and gentle rain against the somber piano and synth sounds as they shimmer and skip in subtle granular manipulations. When using recorded sounds like these, do their real-world sources inform your compositional choices, or do you approach them in musique concrete fashion, divorced from their origin?

Mike: The field recordings and the rest of the composition are definitely in conversation. I don't go out to record a particular sound, the recordings are often just audio snapshots of places or sounds that I find while doing something else that I think are evocative or interesting. Then, when I'm working on music, I'll pull them out and start adding elements that draw out the character of the field recording further. I think of it like sonic airbrushing sometimes—I'm trying to make the work evoke what the recording made me feel by supplementing it, even if it makes it less of a direct documentation. David Toop's book Ocean of Sound was a huge inspiration for this approach.

I've been working on a whole new set of material in this style that I'll be performing at the Plastics Dept. show. It's a sort of sonic-emotional diary of my travels around the Southern hemisphere.

Music for Airports is one of my favorite pieces of music, and I was prepared for the inevitable comparisons, but I think Eno's vision of 'tinting' the airport environment is aiming for something totally different. To be honest I think Leaving/Returning has more in common with Autobahn or Trans-Europe Express—trying to recreate the feeling of a mode of travel instead of trying to supplement an environment.

PC: For both of you, is on-the-road composition or production a common practice in your musical lives? What does that practice look like?

Matthew: I really admire Mike's ability to compose on the move! Generally (and much to my chagrin), my studio practice tends to be pretty stationary given the giant NVIDIA desktop computer and mess of MIDI controllers I use when building simulations. I do find that gear tends to be the least generative part of the creative process for me though, and being away from things on the road offers a kind of space for ideation - pen and paper sketches for different systems, simulation structures, and similar that I can bring back to the studio once I'm back home.

Mike: It was for a while, when I was making Leaving/Returning, but I think I'm through that phase for now. I still love to travel to play live though.

PC: As I alluded to above, it's arguable that 'ambient' doesn't fully capture the sound world curated by Oxtail's numerous releases—across the catalog we can hear everything from cinematic synth sequence odysseys to warmly tinny indie rock, battering industrial beats to the virtual psychedelia of Matt's work. Even still, I'm curious how each of you think of your music in relation to ambience, elongated form, and the perception of passing time—do you find these notions of 'ambience' properly descriptive or inspirational for your own practices?

Matthew: I suppose I don't always fit into the archetypal sonic zones of 'ambient', but I think you're absolutely right re: that notion of perceptual time. One of my favorite things about hearing a great piece or performance is the way that linear progression stops and you can feel just suspended in the endless moment. I think I sense that moment of time disappearing from anything from the most glacial drones to a Coltrane shredfest, or anything in between. Ultimately, in my own music I'd like to be able to create a sonic space that feels like you can stay with it without feeling rushed. Going back to Eno or Satie-type notions of sonic wallpaper, I think I still want this, my wall paper might be a bit more Memphis Group though!

Mike: I second that—I'm definitely interested in what music can do to time perception, which is part of what I was getting at on Leaving/Returning. The current state of electronic music can be very DAW- and clock-focused, which can really push you toward making what I call 'horizontal' music which is so fixated on time: what happened before, what happens next. I like the idea of 'vertical' music which is sort of like a campfire or a lava lamp. It's constantly moving but somehow guides you to just be in the moment. The Aviary days with Matt and Konrad were a very formative experience in finding that zone.

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PC: Matthew, I'm excited to see the visual spaces you will be bringing to the upcoming Plastics Dept. as part of your integrated audiovisual performance. How did video, animation, and computer physics enter into your musical practice, or was the combination always part of your work as an artist?

Matthew: It's been a bit of a winding road getting to where I'm at currently, but the short form: A lifetime ago, I was a guitarist going to music school, and absolutely into the catharsis of shredding pentatonics and jamming live with buds. Over time, I burnt out on the guitar, got into the sonic possibilities of electronic music, and really struggled to reconcile the embodied nature of playing an 'IRL' instrument with the disembodied feeling of making music with a computer and similar. This got me thinking about 'where' these sounds were, and about the nature of sonic simulation. What 'is' that virtual MIDI violin?

Around that time, I was incredibly fortunate to receive a scholarship to travel to Paris for a summer Max/MSP course at IRCAM, and while out there, was able to catch an organ recital at the Notre Dame cathedral. What blew me away experiencing it after days of staring at the laptop was the way an organ concert reframes the concert experience - rather than a 'human scale' relation between the musician and guitar, the relation between an organist and the organ is almost architectural. Similarly, the placement of the organist behind the audience serves to activate the entire space, rather than frame the embodied performer. This, combined with earlier questions around the nature of 'where' my MIDI software instruments are situated, got me interested in the idea of playing with sound in virtual space.

While building a multichannel speaker array or buildings of my own was out of question, the subsequent rise of free game engines and VR authoring software got me thinking about how the construction of virtual 3D environments can offer a novel musical context, while still rooted in prior musical tradition, whether it be the cathedral organ concert, canonical avant-garde projects like the Philips Pavilion, or artists like Pauline Oliveros's experiments with music in Second Life.

PC: In your storied history of synthesizing, you worked as studio assistant to the great Morton Subotnick—how did working with such a defining figure in the world of synthesis shape your own approach to working with modular synthesizers, or composing electronic music in general?

Matthew: I feel incredibly grateful for that experience! I think one of the things that felt really special with Mort, and one of the things that I really took from that experience was the way in which he was very invested in not just the 'what' but the 'why' of trying to conceptualize music in a new medium. Hearing stories about those early days of developing the Buchla system with Don has been huge in my own work with trying to understand the possibilities and poetics of sound in virtual space and game engines.

Mort was always very big on Marshall McLuhan, and the quote about "looking into the future through the rear view mirror" always struck me, or the idea that we use the received metaphors of prior technology to understand the new moment. Attempting to break away from that trope of just making shinier versions of existing paradigms and instead see what's truly new or exciting about an emerging medium has me very excited about the sonic possibilities of the contemporary moment!

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PC: The audiovisual systems you create involve networks of interaction between video and audio components—simulated physics define motion patterns contingent on virtual shapes, which trigger musical events, and vice versa—what about this method of generating musical forms through networks of interaction do you find inspiring, as opposed to more conventional, linear composition techniques?

Matthew: Well said! Like, I think beyond the classic 'top down' architecture model of a piece ("here's the blueprint, now I'll build it") and the 'bottom up' gardner ("let me plan some seeds and see how they grow"), I've been really influenced by composers like Laurie Spiegel's work with algorithmic systems, or Mort Subotnick and Don Buchla's early conceptualizations of using a system to define a 'gesture' or shape.

In that way, I find myself trying to move away from a kind of audiovisual practice where it's like, "here's the music, and here's the visualizer" or "here's a film and here's the soundtrack," and instead move to a space where I'm creating virtual scenarios, or environments where there's some kind of causal relationship between the simulation and the sound, or a way in which emergent structures can result from simple rules. It's absolutely something I'm still learning, and always trying to go deeper with some of these ideas!

PC: You've presented this type of work in 360 dome projection spaces, VR environments, and other deeply immersive spaces, both in terms of the video format and multi-channel audio. Are there challenges you find in bringing this practice to venues limited to 2D video and stereo audio applications?

Matthew: Totally—I'm really self-taught with a lot of these things, so I'm sure there's all sorts of technical best practices with regard to dealing with the game engines and similar that would make things more elegant on the programming side. On the other hand, this idea of taking a simulation, or a virtual sound object across a variety of presentation modes or models seems really exciting creatively.

One of the things that I initially struggled with when working with a computer was feeling that my materials were 'trapped' behind the glass of my laptop screen. In a way, being able to create a virtual environment, and then scale it up or down to a 360 dome, to a VR headset, or to a stereo screen in a concert almost feels like the old cubism idea of seeing the same thing from multiple angles simultaneously—I think maybe it's been an unexpected tool in helping me conceptualize what my materials 'are' in a way.

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PC: Beyond this upcoming tour, are there any upcoming projects or releases you two are looking forward to?

Matthew: Absolutely—I've been sketching out some more ideas for emergent systems and virtual sonic agents while on the road. This fall, I'm going to be developing a few self-playing sports video games that will be used as an emergent system to generate wonky bleeps and bloops. I've also been down the rabbit hole with Denmark-based friend and brilliant human Joakim Moesgaard discussing some new possibilities for custom Unreal engine nodes, alongside a creative collaboration where we're trying to build a 'band' of various abstract virtual sculptures. I'm always excited to hear what Mike and the Oxtail gang is cooking up, too!

Mike: The set I'm playing on this tour will eventually become my next album, and I've got a huge backlog of label releases to get to once I'm off the road, which I'm extremely stoked about. Another vinyl LP plus many more tapes coming your way shortly.