The Rhythm of Ordinary Things
A conversation with composer and sound designer Matthew Wilcock, from Zelig Sound, about pattern, play, and human touch.
By Nando Costa on January, 2026
I met Matthew over ten years ago when we collaborated on a Microsoft project. I immediately loved the way he worked in which he seemed to intuitively understand my own motivations with each and every project, and somehow come back with incredible musical compositions that felt as if they had always been a part of the animation.
For the following years, besides working with his studio on dozens of projects for Microsoft and Google, many of which you can see here, I also connected with Matthew’s personal musical work such as this short piece.
What has in fact attracted me to his sound has been the one-of-a-kind sensibility and talent for creating music that feels both authentically digital and modern, while also inherently human, and therefore acts as naturally opposing force to the inherent artificial quality of much of today’s design and branding work.
The following conversation is an exploration of his background and process, along with some of his latest projects. I hope you enjoy it.
The UK arguably has one of the most influential cultures when it comes to music. What was it like growing up there as a musician, and how did you figure out it’s what you wanted to do for a living?
I don’t usually consider myself having grown up a musician, but I did musician-like things, like playing and singing in front of the class in primary school, writing songs, etc. At that time I was into Oasis, Michael Jackson and The Police (the only good influence my mum musically gave me!). I later picked it back up and got obsessed with making beats and hip hop at the end of secondary school.
Manchester was a big football and brit pop/rock place: Oasis, Take That, Happy Mondays, The Hacienda. When I was a teenager, I hated all that stuff and didn’t relate to it at all. So, I spent my time playing basketball, listening to Hip Hop, collecting records (which made me discover a lot of random interesting music). Those were sub-cultures in Manchester, UK.
Whilst all that was going on, I was equally into art and drawing. I was nudged into it because I was a bit of a tear away at school. I didn’t really know what was what, truanted a lot, didn’t study or know how to study, but enjoyed creating stuff visually and writing. Ultimately, just expressing myself.
The school I went to wasn’t that great. I’m not sure they knew what to do with me. The same goes for college (16-18 here in the UK). There I studied art, English lit and sport science, but only really enjoyed art and English. I remember writing whole essays in rhyme schemes, which looking back is quite interesting. But that’s not how you get good grades. Same for art: I didn’t know how to pass, or work to a criteria or marking scheme.
Anyhow, I went to study Fine Art at university, as I had no other options because I didn't get good grades. But got in on the strength of a test piece. I dropped out after 9 months or so. I was pretty confused and troubled mentally at that age. All that time I’d been making hip hop and collecting records, so after dropping out the only thing I was into was music.
Ultimately, I went back to college for a year to study music and got into University straight after that to study music tech at The University of Huddersfield. I’m lucky to have I ended up there. It suited me very well in lots of ways. I learned about philosophy, contemporary music thinking, art, academic music. I wasn’t even aware of it all prior, but it really sparked my brain, and I loved studying all that stuff. That’s how I got into music.
As doing it for a living, I didn’t know anyone doing anything creative for a living growing up, so didn’t know those jobs existed. I’m lucky to have stumbled upon this stuff.
For years now, there’s been a resurgence in vinyl, cassette, and smaller live venues, and in many ways, it feels like an opposite force emerging as an answer to streaming and the massive concert venues we see particularly here in the U.S..
What is your relationship to this more analog and personal side of music these days and what is your favorite way to enjoy music?
I’ve never liked big venues. I don’t like big crowds of people, or loud places, so I was never really into that scene anyhow. But I definitely think, maybe because of social media and how it creates this simultaneous closeness and distance between us, that there’s a barrier, even with a constant connection. It’s like hugging through a pane of glass. Maybe because of that, we value more intimate things, like smaller venues and going to events or more obviously crafted things.
I think vinyl can be two fold, it can be a bit of a cynical cash grab by re-releasing classic things and charging loads for new releases. But then it can also be wonderful because you get to hold and use this magical large plastic sound disc.
There’s a ritual to it, like reading a book or going to the cinema, the media changes the interaction quite a bit. You feel more, or differently. You work harder for it. There’s probably some psychology behind the actual sound too, as it’s not as high fidelity. Maybe it’s easier to listen to, or the fact it will certainly feel generally, different to a digital track.
Cassette tapes are hilariously bad quality in comparison to what we have now, but the noise, warble, clicks, etc, they add a story, and we like stories. I like reading older used books vs. new ones for that reason too.
Saying all that, I pretty much only listen to stuff on Spotify and podcasts on YouTube. I use them for convenience and I like how it throws things at me which I might like or find interesting. Finding new music is wonderful and it takes way longer to do that in other ways.
I used to do that manually in record shops back in the day, get half a dozen things, taking them to the record player in the shop and skipping through. I don’t have time for that at the moment. Maybe because I like the “analog” process or physical process more when i’m making music, I don’t feel the need to listen to music regularly that way.
I still pick up records sometimes. I found a wonderful Charlie Parker record last month with a wonderful cover. Books are a bit like that too, finding an edition with an interesting cover with someone’s writing in the front page that’s 50 years old, it’s just more interesting than a new edition or something on a screen. We make and feel stories about these things, right?
Something that stands out to me in your tracks is a certain human quality. Is this analog quality to your sound something you’re often chasing, and if so how do you usually get there?
I think we might have to define “analog” a bit: “relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity”. In that way, lots of things are analog, but get recorded digitally and listened to digitally.
Re: my music, it's probably because I play everything, and try to play everything live, so you're capturing a moment and those are imperfect. That’s the analog bit for me. A human is a continuous variable physical quantity (I might call that a release / project). People can tell, whether they know it or not, that someone is playing it, even if it’s a digital synth or instrument in the computer.
There’s levels to it right? Playing a piano made out of a tree, and sitting next to it and listening, then next, listening to it recorded straight onto vinyl or tape using electrical signals, and only listened back that way. On and on, all the way up to an A.I. listening to an A.I., I guess.
Actually, at some point, maybe that’s analog, or at least it would be continuously variable. I think with the analog stuff, it’s just a human thing. Hey, can you tell if a human made that? And then there’s a ton of cultural context applied on top of it.
I’d also add that recording stuff is just harder than programming stuff (for me anyhow). It’s a journey to get to the recording which makes me, as an artist, more connected to the work and process. That’s just for music though, really. The artworks I make, I don't make them in the same way. The outcomes and concepts are so different. Though it’s the ones that still embody that journey of a process that I tend to consider much better and more meaningful.
When we first met, I was at first more familiar with your work composing for ads and other commercial work via Zelig, but over time I discovered the other equally beautiful, but more deeply personal songs you write as well.
Is it easy for you to switch back and forth between the music you create for businesses and what you do exclusively for yourself? How different is your process between these two worlds?
Not really. It’s not easy for me to switch. They’re mostly quite different things and I approach them in different ways. I don’t have to be emotionally attached to Zelig stuff the same way I am to my own music. And if I'm not emotionally attached to my own music or artwork, I don't do it.
That’s not the same for Zelig work, of course. I have become very invested in some of the Zelig stuff I’ve taken on more recently because I do less manual work and more creative direction nowadays. When I do work on something vs. directing, I'm naturally a bit more invested.
I think both sides influence me in good ways. For example, I will often bring something completely different to a Zelig project because I’m just being an artist. Then, with my artist projects, sometimes I will have to push through to the finish line and do the grindy stuff to get stuff done.
It’s hard to unpick. As an artist, I used to feel guilty about my Zelig work, but I don’t as much these days. When I occasionally do, I come to realize that compromising, and doing things that pay the rent while having a part of you that’s a craftsman, there’s a nobility in that. From the many artists and creatives I’ve met, i’m not sure that the platonic ideal of an artist exists. Everyone is compromising in something while looking for that ideal space. I’m always looking for a balance where I can express myself more and create my personal work.
Listen to Mathew Wilcock
Listen to Mathew Wilcock
Listen to Zelig Sound
Listen to Zelig Sound
It is easy for me to tell that you feed off the moving pictures that you score for. When creating a track or sound design, what do you hope to see in the animations and films to inspire your best work?
That’s a really tricky question. Commercially or brand stuff, it’s usually something very high concept, esoteric, poetic, vivid, or something like that. We’re lucky to work with so many amazing visual people and studios making beautiful things. I guess like anyone, I like something that surprises me and has good taste.
For my own work, whatever piece or concept I'm working on, I often think of a title, story, visual, quote that will be the genesis of the idea. I think we’re storytellers as people and those things tell us stories. As well as fine art, I used to write loads when I was younger, I’d write endless poems and lyrics. When I was at University I wrote a whole 60k+ word novel. I must have been coping with something, not sure!
Having seen you create music in real-time, I was impressed by how fast you can stand up a track that really embodies some emotional weight. How do you go from idea to execution so quickly?
Is it second nature at this stage, and when you want to, how do you break away from your usual tricks?
This is a good thing and a bad thing. I can work really fast and get stuff out really quickly, but I can get impatient or maybe too excited. Sometimes, it’s good if I have an enforced time to reflect on it or go back to. My own work takes way longer. I need to find a middle ground!
The thing with the studio and working with other composers at Zelig is that reflection time is shortcutted. Because we share everything we’re doing internally at all stages of the work in progress, when you share something with others, your perspective changes on your own work, and that’s a great way to get stuff done and iterate quickly.
What has your experience been with generative AI, and more specifically tools that can generate voices and sounds?
At first I was excited and curious when messing with Midjourney, etc. I then got pretty bored of it. It's like creating your own Instagram feed: pretty images that give you a spike in dopamine, but you didn’t earn it or have a real connection with them.
We see a lot of AI voice over at the moment, but very rarely for the final voice. It’s usually just to replace a producer doing a temp read.
We have seen the occasional full AI brand film, which to be honest is pretty depressing and a bit hard to unpick. Usually creatively, they’re not that good or interesting, usually taking the place of stock imagines or stock footage i guess?
A lot of the visual artists we work with really value their craft and are artists and directors in their own right, so we don’t see it from that POV that much. I’ve heard of and seen it used quite a bit for storyboards which is kinda interesting but again, there’s something about it that maybe is rounding off some edges or happy accidents, ideas that might have been sparked by someone creating those boards or concept art pieces by hand. I dunno, there can be happy accidents with AI too, I imagine.
AI in music still feels like a novelty to me. I see people using it a bit like I mentioned above with the visuals, but at the moment we’re a bit insulated. As for sound effects, generative stuff is not good or as sonically interesting.
If there comes a tool that can actually create something I have yet to come across sonically or musically, then great! That would be wicked to play with, but it just doesn’t seem to work like that because it imitates, right? It’s like the best quickest cover band in the universe.
Also, you can’t copyright music generated with AI, so you can’t license AI genned music at the moment. That’s good.
When I speak to designers at studios and agencies, I often hear that artificial intelligence repeatedly comes up as a part of the brief, whether as a requirement for it to be a part of the process, or as a way to ensure it is excluded entirely.
I wonder if the same is true when it comes to music production: how pervasive is this topic in your conversations with the brands and agencies you collaborate with?
It’s come up a few times, but nothing came of it. An AI company wanted us to do some sonic branding and so they could train AI on what we did.
Practically, I couldn't understand how it could work and be useful as an actual branding tool, unless you create loads of brand specific music. But then if you did that, they might as well just use that music you created.
Don’t you need loads of data to train and AI? So, they’d be diluting their brand sound straight away with someone else's if they pulled from other sources. It felt a bit like a catch 22. I’m not sure, anything came of it in the end. There were more questions than answers.
For many months now, you have been creating video clips that appear to act as direct drivers for your music (example seen on the right). Normally, there is movement on screen, and as people and objects move across, they trigger a sound.
Can you tell us a little more about what’s happening there and how this project came about?
The Cycles | Playhead series has two origins. I was at the Anni Albers exhibition at the Tate and I just couldn’t stop imagining her patterns as musical sequences and rhythms. She made these wonderful large weave and textile patterns, and the process to make them kind of looks like an electronic music sequence.
I worked on loads of ideas on how to translate these into music, but I never landed on something I really liked. I’m still working on it actually, but this planted the seed.
I was feeling really shit one evening and i went for a walk late in the evening with my headphones on, i walked a route i don’t normally walk, towards the ringroad. I stopped to watch some road workers laying cones when I started to notice the rhythms of the cars, how the rhythm started to change as the cones blocked a lane. Instantly I wanted to convert those rhythms to music. It was quite an interesting moment, I was looking over the motorway imagining something beautiful, in a place that I usually found stressful and repulsive. I was inspired to think about all of the other patterns and structures that I could emotionally reinterpret in this way. Then by placing the playhead in interesting places I started to realise you could start to understand more about something by revealing the patterns and rhythms with sound.
I make them by shooting footage (or find stock footage or footage from another creative), something with a pattern I find interesting or I think will be interesting. I stick it in davinci and figure out where to place the pink line, i then import that into Ableton, make up some tonal rules, like the top two lanes play F and A, the bottom lanes walk up and down 3rds, whatever i fancy or am inspired to do, then play it in live and sometimes nudge the audio to be frame accurate.
I used to do it in Touchdesigner at the start. I was using TD to visualise where the line was crossed with a little box but that just made the process twice as long for me and i wanted to just get to the music part as quick as possible and see the finished thing, so I scrapped that part and used Davinci instead. I didn’t have the paid for version of TD either and I liked the higher res versions in Davinci, especially for when i started shooting them myself and shooting the drone ones.
I’m so surprised that it’s entirely manual, and honestly I find it even more interesting that it is. There is a prototype-like aesthetic to your posts, so I had assumed these were part of a tool you were working on.
Did that aesthetic just happen organically, or did you want to want that to be the takeaway?
Yeah I think so, I was just looking for a way for people to quickly understand what was going on when they watched it. It made sense for them to see the pink line and along with the midi score version of the music - it made the connection more obvious.
These choices also made people think it was automated too, which is funny. I’d hate it to be automated, deciding the rules and playing them in yourself IS the fun bit, i am the automation, my brain, ears, hands and eyes. I see people have done automated versions inspired by them, but i haven't heard one that sounds interesting, people forgot that bit, it’s interesting but it’s about the pictures being transformed by the music, not just the process of “X triggers Y isn’t that so cool”. It is cool, but not as interesting to me as the transformation. The best thing is when people start to ascribe real meaning to the people and places that are being transformed, like that one random car triggering the note that resolves or modulates a phrase, you start to think about that person's life, their influence on that moment, their journey and then your own life, it’s really interesting how people react to them.
From my vantage point, it seems like the work you do in scoring music in partnership with the motion graphics studios is quite niche. Would you agree and if so, why do you think that is?
I guess so, but the most interesting work is niche, right? I don’t know anyone else who has done what you’ve done, similar stuff, but not the same. This goes for a lot of my creative friends and acquaintances. My mum is a specialist children nurse, that’s pretty niche to me!
The thing with motion graphics is that there is quite a lot of it and it covers such a broad array of media types, creativity and outputs, so there’s a lot of that work. Also, it’s not like a film shoot, you’re not rolling sound on that stuff, it has to be created. So, it needs music and sound. And because it has the ability to be whatever it wants, it can be very creative and tech driven. There’s an opportunity to have really interesting and fun music and sound design.
What advice do you have for those dreaming of entering and ultimately being successful in this space?
Hmmm. When I'm feeling romantic I say, just be an artist and do what you really want to do.
When I'm being practical, I'd say, there are no secrets. You just have to out work like everyone else. For better or worse, that’s what I feel like I did and still have the capacity to do. Though reading back, these are both equally romantic and practical.
You have just announced the formation of a new record label, Super Generic, which focuses on artist-led projects across recorded music, visual art, and live performances.
What inspired you to start this project, and how do you see it being different from other labels?"
First, why not? It’s a fun thing for me to do. I was self-releasing my own stuff so then I was just like, why not release other peoples stuff that I like? Then, I was chatting to Jack about it and he thought, yeah why not, let’s do it. (Jack has been my artist manager for 7 years or so).
The main reasons: Releasing music and giving a platform to people you might not have heard of or have come across. And secondly, giving unusual, esoteric or obscure things a context and place to be and grow, a place to exist in, not limited to those things though, that would create a bit of a catch 22.
I like the idea of creating a movement around interesting stuff, not over thinking it, brave, beautiful, interesting things based around music, art and sound. Giving them somewhere to feel wanted, safe and proud. I think that’s a nice naive goal to have. Then that also brings meeting and being around interesting people, I need that in my life. I feel like my brain needs that, I get stagnant and bored without it.
I’ve always looked for that kind of space for myself and have never found it or have never been invited to it, so what do you do if that happens? Make it you’re fuckin self i guess.
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