After a short break, the band reunited at Hookahville 2024, in a slot opening for Ekoostik Hookah, rejuvenating its desire to book more shows and record new music. Last winter, Boogie Matrix Mechanism returned to Dayton, its professed “home away from home.”
“The energy for that last show… it was a very enlightening and invigorating experience because of the energy that comes from Dayton,” said BMM guitarist Johnny K. “After not being there for 10 years, coming back and having people show up is, in itself, flattering to say the least. Walking into that energetic atmosphere was a delight to play. You feed off that as a musician.”
The last show Boogie Matrix Mechanism played in Dayton featured the band’s original lineup. This time, BMM is down a bassist. But Dave “Klassic” Kwyer, originally a superfan of the band, recently stepped up to fill those shoes. Klassic is also a part of the Phish tribute project, Phinger Guns. As Johnny K described the lineup change: it’s the same working juggernaut, but with a different face.
The band’s latest single, “Rearranged,” is about the band’s metamorphosis.
Released on July 4 — a coincidental date without any significant profundity — “Rearranged” fuses BMM’s signature “hippie hop jam rock” with a little more funk this time, perhaps a subconscious nod to its love for its home away from home.
The song’s artwork features a finger train on a Möbius track, a sacred lotus merged with a mushroom cloud, and a three-eyed man liquifying as he attempts to solve an impossible Rubik’s Cube — impossible, considering this writer knows there cannot possibly be two orange center pieces.
Though the “Rearranged” artwork was clearly AI-generated, its imagery pairs well with the grand Boogie Matrix Mechanism aesthetic: The genre-fluid band has become genre-less, a genre unto itself; it’s as difficult to define the band as it is solving a post-apocalyptic Rubik’s Cube.
It should be noted that the band has a stable of artists it typically calls on, and the AI generation was a last-resort decision.
So what commentary was BMM going for?
Art-wise, there isn’t any. It just looks cool. Song-wise, however, it’s a tribute to the past and the future.
“It’s keeping the same feels, keeping the same spirit of the band with just a slightly different component in there,” Johnny said. “Any band that I’ve ever been in, any one change makes a big difference. But not only is Dave a phenomenal player, and he does add his own twist on things, it doesn’t feel any different at all. It feels like home.”
“Rearranged” was the first time the band pieced together a song in the studio from nothing. Starting with a simple click track and Brian Bell’s scratch vocals (and remarkable lyrical talent), BMM built the track out from there.
“The most interesting and unique experience about it,” Johnny said, “was that we had never even played that song together, not once as a full band. I wasn’t even that excited about the song until it started to transform and come together.”
The band’s latest single is said to be a tease for a new record, either an LP or an EP, a follow-up to “Undertones of Technicolored Madness” from 2023. “Rearranged” is a funk song about lineup changes, and a comment on how Boogie Matrix Mechanism has devised a new method of making music.
“It was like a Christmas tree,” Johnny said. “We lit it, there was a flame, and then, all of a sudden, it was just completely engulfed.”
That flame, it seems, is still burning.
HOW TO GO
What: Crushoween, with Boogie Matrix Mechanism and WAHFU
When: 8 p.m. Nov. 1
Where: Yellow Cab Tavern, 700 E. 4th St., Dayton
Cost: $15 at the door
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