‘It Definitely Stretches Beyond The Bounds Of Conventional Music’: Matt Corby & Tenzin Choegyal On Their Genre-Bending Album

Matt Corby is known for his conventional music. The Aussie singer-songwriter indie/folk/rock music has captured ears (and hearts) around the nation. But it’s time for a “curveball” - and that’s where Tenzin Choegyal comes in.

The Grammy-nominated Tibetan musician, known for his captivating soundscapes, met Corby at Woodford Folk Festival years ago, and they connected instantly. 

“We ended up playing a couple of shows together, and I was just always in awe of his voice and his musicality,” Corby tells The Music. “He just seems like this kind of unicorn that I feel like we're very lucky to have here in Australia. He's like a conduit between English speaking people and the Tibetan language, and he makes music from that perspective, with all the ideals of his Tibetan heritage and Buddhism and everything else.”

As such, it just made sense to Corby to make an album with Choegyal as soon as he possibly could. So, when he launched his own label, Rainbow Valley Records, Corby knew exactly who to call.

“Once we were going to start the label, there were no second thoughts,” Corby confirms. “We were like, ‘Oh, we should do an album with Tenzin, because that would be amazing and hilarious.’ And we had no idea what it was going to look or feel like or sound like, but we knew that if we got him in a room, with me and Rohin [Jones, from The Middle East] and Alex [Henriksson], we would come away with something really interesting. And lo and behold, I think we did.”

That’s how Snow Flower was birthed. The collaborative album by Corby, Choegyal, and Jones dropped today - a poignant exploration of life as a whole, peppered with unconventional instruments, healing frequencies, and Corby singing in Tibetan.

“I think it was a curveball for everyone that was a part of the greater team at Warner - but for me, it's what I thought was the right thing to do. Everyone else thought it was hilarious, just because it's not modern music. But this record goes beyond what is happening in music, and I like to be a part of things like that. It was really fun to make, and I think it's really special and one of a kind thing. So, you know, I'd be silly not to invest time and effort and do my part to get it out into the world,” Corby laughs.

Choegyal agrees, telling us, “It's a very unique combination. And probably not many people would go, ‘Okay, Tenzin and Matt together, doing a song or making a song together’. It probably wouldn't come into many of the beings mental afflictions.

“But I think the uniqueness of it is actually described by the album's title itself, in a way, because we called it Snow Flower, which is kind of like the snowflake. Like all snowflakes, it's very unique on its own. Each individual snowflake is very unique, like me and Matt. We are part of the larger human community, but in that larger human community, we are very unique beings in our own self. And so when two unique beings come together, I think it can bring beautiful things at the same time, also acknowledging the transient nature of everything, like the snowflower itself.”

Snow Flower itself leans into the “unique”, and at times, unorthodox - lending itself to 13 minute soundscapes, dranyen lutes, and Tibetan meditation chants. But unorthodox was the plan - or lack thereof. Recorded over three days, the entire album ended up being more of an unplanned jam session.

“There was no real intended direction before we began to make noise,” Corby admits. “It was more like, there was an idea, and let's expand on this idea until we feel like it's enough and it feels good. Every song was its own standalone moment. Tenzin would be like, ‘Oh, I've got this idea.’ Like alright, go and record it, and then I would jump on the scent, and then Rohin might be bowing his guitar and then afterwards, I might go in and be like, ‘I'm just going to throw a bunch of backing vocals on it, just to create a chorus’. And I'd rerecord it 30 times in harmony, and, you know, we'd just find places for it all. We’d try to create a starting point and a finishing point and make it feel good from A to B.”

“There's a Tibetan term called tertön, and it means ‘Ideas are revealed’, you know?”, Choegyal explains. “Like you have to encounter the idea. So those three days we spent together, we encountered a couple of ideas, and then we became the revealer of those ideas. It's like, it's like, tertön means ‘The Treasure Revealer’, the revealer of the treasure. 

“And so, you know, maybe the idea had only 10% of the thing, and then Matt would come in and reveal the whole thing. So any of our collaborations where we were just kind of revealing the idea, the idea was probably already there. We hadn’t encountered them yet, and then we just encountered them as we were kind of coming together.”

“I felt like I was in a bit of a trance the whole time,” Corby laughs. “That probably had something to do with the music itself. But it just felt like we're in this bubble where nothing outside of it existed just for that time. And I felt completely just invested and running off instinct, and we were really quite productive in our approach to everything that we did in the moment.”

But the album isn’t just music or “noise” - there’s an added element in it.

“We were focused on this concept of healing,” Matt says. “I think there is a healing element to what this music is and I hope that people can be patient enough to understand that. I intentionally did everything in 432Hz - I mean, there's lots of back and forth about whether or not that is a healing frequency or not. I think I'll let people do their own research on that. There's definitely music theorists that think it's a pseudoscience, and then there's people that have done studies that will claim otherwise.”

“I would proudly say it has healing elements,” Choegyal chimes in. “Those who encounter the album will encounter the healing aspects of it as well, you know? We didn't put out this album just as a fun thing. It was fun making it, but at the same time we actually did make a point of bringing that healing aspect in that sound.”

Corby closes out: “I genuinely think people need music like this, so we're honoured to be a part of it.”

‘Snow Flower’, the collaborative album by Corby, Choegyal, and Jones, is out on all streaming platforms now.