Matt Kendall

Matt is Co-Founder and Creative Director of RetroFuzz. Since it’s inception in 2007 RetroFuzz has worked exhaustively with music and lifestyle brands, navigating the ever changing digital world to help brands grow. Outside of client work, RetroFuzz has also created standalone platforms such as Lanyard.fm, a live music focussed social network that started at a hack weekend before attracting a passionate worldwide user base. As a passionate and proud resident of Manchester, Matt is inspired by the rich heritage of his city – yet finds the prospect of contributing to its new creative future infinitely more motivating.

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

Music has had a profound influence on my life, and ultimately my career. My passion first grew out spending a period of time in Manchester at the height of ‘Madchester’, which provided opportunites to discovering new bands, new designers, new fashion, and as my interests widened – new worlds. I’ve always been fascinated by the window music provides into other lives, and how it can so lucidly capture the zeitgeist. It’s why I love Dylan as much as NWA, Oasis as much a Tribe Called Quest, Underworld as much Sleaford Mods.

I’ve been lucky enough to witness some amazing artists in amazing locations, and shared those experiences with some amazing people. I met my wife at a gig. I met my Co-Founder at a gig. I still love trying to decide what the best I’ve seen was (it’s usually a toss up between Dylan, DJ Shadow, or The Charlatans, btw. Or The National).

Music didn’t so much inspire my career path – it became my career path. Out of the relationships I made going to gigs came the opportunity to begin using my design background to create websites for bands. Starting out with a couple of bands, we ended up working with the very artists that had inspired our passion to start with, which led to some surreal moments. We’ve had design presentations with bands that descended into debating who was the drunkest out of us at one of their gigs. We’ve been with bands go from social clubs to sellout tours (and back). We even got paid with a cheque signed by Liam Gallagher once – we weren’t sure if we should frame it or cash it. We cashed it, of course.

As the industry has suffered and changed, and our focus has moved towards lifestyle brands, we’ve remained passionate music fans. And ultimately as listening habits have changed one thing hasn’t, and that’s how music can unite people. Whilst we may not share mixtapes anymore, or flick through each others CD collection, there’s never been a better time for discovering – and sharing – new finds. And that’s the basis of my playlist.

Tell us about your playlist:

Spotify have nailed music discovery with the ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist. So much so, I think a vast majority of tracks in my Best of 2016 were found through it. But one thing that’s not been nailed yet is how you can share that on – so as it stands Collaborative Playlists is the best bet. As the title may suggest, my playlist isn’t just made of tracks I love, but ones that friends do also. Through sharing tracks we’ve discovered one at a time we’ve created a tag team of music discovery, with inputs coming from all over the world. I love that feeling when someone sends you a song because they think you’ll like it. As a result, this is an hour of hip-hop from around the world.