Matisyahu ready to deliver 'Light'

Matisyahu says that fans who listened to his debut album, "Shake Off the Dust ... Arise," only got a taste of his musical abilities. His EP "Shattered" and upcoming full-length, "Light," will really give listeners a sense of what he's about.

"Some people heard my music and that roots-reggae kind of sound at first," Matisyahu said in an interview from Baltimore with SoundSpike. "They're like, 'That's the real Matisyahu and everything else is different.' In truth, that was me making a reggae record. It wasn't like that was my sound and I tried to make my sound more pop, or I tried to make my sound more this or more that.

"I'm totally influenced by whatever I listen to and I listen to everything from Bjork to The Flaming Lips to OutKast. On this record ['Light'], for example, I didn't feel it needed to be in any one direction. I think probably it's a record that's the most eclectic so far."

Matisyahu explained that "Light," slated for release in the first quarter of next year, is equal parts hip-hop, reggae and rock.

"I guess a lot of times in the past, our songs weren't necessarily pure reggae. Because I was singing with a reggae accent, people called it reggae. Here, on this record, I dropped the accent a lot more than I ever have, and I tried to allow for my voice to come out and express itself, even with some singing, some rapping, not just with that one style. So that's probably going to make people say, 'This is really not reggae.'"

With "Shake Off the Dust ... Arise," his producer pushed him into making a reggae album, Matisyahu said. He wasn't necessarily against it, because he loves reggae.

The process of making "Light" was much different than that of "Shake Off the Dust ... Arise," which took a long time to produce.

"[During the making of 'Shake Off the Dust,'] I was in Yeshiva [an institution unique to classical Judaism for Torah study] and I was becoming religious," said 29-year-old Matisyahu, who, as a teenager named Matthew Paul Miller, adopted Orthodox Judaism.

"I was spending a lot of time learning Torah. There was one day a week in my Yeshiva--which was on Friday afternoons--where the guys in the Yeshiva would go in the city of Manhattan and basically proselytize, like talk to other Jewish people and visit other Jews who were not religious and talk to them about religion and stuff. I somehow got permission not to do that and instead to go in the studio and work on my record. I basically went Friday afternoons and did that for a year. That's how that record was made, with my producer and my old bass player, Josh Werner, and me getting together and writing songs."

With "Light," he was able to concentrate fully on the making of the album. First, he had to decide in which direction he wanted to go.

"It was a process of trying to figure out what it was I wanted to say, so that I wouldn't be repeating myself," Matisyahu said.

"That process consisted of me working with a friend of mine, and the friend of mine was sort of like a teacher and we would discuss and compare different ideas and different concepts. Eventually, we pared that down into some very key ideas.

"Then I got together different friends that I enjoy creating music with. My guitarist, Aaron Dugan, he has a loft space and we would sit in the loft and basically jam out. He plays guitar and he uses a lot of pedals and is able to create a multitude of different sounds. I, with my vocals, do similar things. I create bass sounds and drum sounds. Basically, we would record those sessions and go back and pull out different ideas--maybe it's a bass line or one rhythm or something like that. Then a friend of mine named Ooah, who plays in a group called The Glitch Mob, programmed beats."

He called "Shattered," which hit stores in late October, a "trailer for the movie" that is "Light."

"It's a short showing of what's going to be."