Back to Home | Peter Matuchniak

My Perspective

Bio

Photo coming soon

Based Southern California
From United Kingdom
Genre Progressive Rock / Jazz
Instrument Guitar, Vocals
Solo Albums 3 studio + 1 live
Bands 7+ projects

I write a lot of music in many different styles, though typically in the vein of Progressive Rock/Jazz. I love to record, mix and produce my songs at my home studio and enjoy the art and craft of making an album. This goes back to my childhood obsession with a reel-to-reel tape machine, spending hours recording at various speeds or running the tape backwards and drawing my inspiration from the sound.

My solo albums are theme-based which brings cohesion to a collection of songs that are otherwise stylistically varied. My longer songs allow for a lyrical theme to develop and repurpose the same musical idea in multiple ways, but I also like to write more concise songs or ideas better suited for film music. Give me a scope, and I will compose accordingly.

Unusual guitar sounds intrigue me, and I always play to the sounds I hear. People tell me that I have a unique playing style; or they hear the influences of Steve Hackett, Dave Gilmour and Andy Latimer, all of whom inspire my compositions along with the musical concepts of Mike Oldfield, Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes. I love a bit of modern jazz like Al Di Meola and Brand X, but for me it all starts with The Beatles.

Musical Timeline

London Bands...

During high school I formed my first band Janysium, releasing a home-made cassette album that sold over 1,000 copies in its first year. We joined forces with Mach One, released an album on vinyl, toured the London club circuit and select Universities across England, gaining attention from the whole British Progressive Rock Revival Movement (sometimes referred to as the Neo-Prog). When we split, I went back to university to complete a degree in Maths.

Bollywood Jingles

After university I travelled throughout Asia, sustaining my existence through writing commercial jingles for Indian TV ads, along with my childhood friend Simon Strevens. Fellow Indian musicians invited us to play with them to an audience of 4,000. Of which 3,999 booed, so I married the other one.

California Bands

My wife and I moved to USA and raised a family. And then I got itchy guitar fingers. Internet ads brought together Evolve IV to release Decadent Light (2008), before Gekko Projekt approached me to join, releasing two more albums Electric Forest (2012) and Reya of Titan (2015), before morphing into Bomber Goggles to release Decadent Light (2017). I'm currently performing in Lobate Scarp, based in Los Angeles and spearheaded by Adam Sears, appearing on their latest album You Have It All (2022) and at the RosFest Festival in Florida in 2022.

East Coast and beyond

Keyboardist Mike Visaggio invited me to join Kinetic Element, based in Richmond, Virginia, in 2017. Despite the distances, we made it work, releasing three albums together, The Face of Life (2018), Live From New York (2020) and Chasing The Lesser Light (2022). We performed live at notable venues My Father's Place (New York 2019) and Orion Studios (Baltimore 2022), as well as a few festivals, ProgStock (New Jersey 2019), Prog on the Ranch (Florida 2020), and Winter's End (U.K. 2023). Our transatlantic show in the U.K. was to be our last act together, as sadly Mike's longtime illness caught up with him and he passed away in 2025.

Solo Stuff

I write a lot of music and began to release my own solo albums, performing live with musicians from Los Angeles. I've done session guitar on several albums, and composed music for a video game, humorous language training video and so on. I am currently working on new solo albums along with other collaborations.


What They Say

"The fact that Matuchniak is still exploring new avenues and producing his best work to date is an inspiration to us all"

— Mark Hughes, DPRP.net

"Mix a bit of Camel with Alan Parsons and drop in a little Pink Floyd — a lot of intriguing music for melodic prog fans"

— Jerry Lucky, Progressive Rock Files

"Acoustic to psychedelic to 'classic' to prog to jazz to whatever, but far from disjointed this is very much a complete piece of work"

— Kev Rowland, ProgArchives

"Easily demanding second, third, and more listens as you marvel at the elasticity of his notes and its haunting prowess"