Matthew Bonnan, like many in the course of the early days of the pandemic, had a variety of time on his arms. Like others, he spent his additional time throughout lockdowns studying one thing new.
In his case, it was the piano — one thing he began tinkering with earlier than the pandemic.
“I suppose I might need to put on the market that I’m not Herbie Hancock, I’m not Billy Joel, I’m not Elton John,” he mentioned with laughter, “however I began to get a really feel for enjoying it.”
Bonnan, a biology professor at Stockton College, additionally felt remoted throughout lockdown, like others.
These feelings helped gasoline the 12-track prog rock impressed album, “As soon as Upon Deep Time.” He mentioned that he lengthy had an thought of writing an album. “What highschool child doesn’t need to be a rock star,” he quipped. However his thought was to tie it to evolution.
On this case, it was about how listening to has developed round vertebrates. The primary tune thought he got here up with, “Distant Contact,” is about how fish understand the world by way of sound.
“I began by writing a number of lyrics down and I checked out [them] and I went, ‘Oh, that’s type of attention-grabbing,’” he mentioned of his songwriting course of.
After choosing a number of chords, he recorded the tune on his telephone. He later thought what it will sound like if he really recorded on skilled software program and sung into a very good microphone.
“It was form of considered one of these items in my spare time,” he mentioned. “I used to be like…’let me get this software program, let me do that, let me attempt that.’ And I type of ended up cobbling collectively the issues that I wanted.”
Behind the music…and the science
Bonnan, the oldest of six, grew up exterior of Chicago. Two issues had been fixed at the moment; he needed to check dinosaurs and his dad and mom performed a variety of music.
“They performed a variety of pop and rock music,” he mentioned. “We’re an enormous household and I believe it’s one of many methods to entertain a bunch of little youngsters.”
He reminisced about listening to WLS Radio when it was Chicago’s pop music powerhouse. But it surely was one other legendary radio station that will affect his musical tastes: The Loop FM 98. That station performed bands like Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Rush.
“A number of these bands, the music actually spoke to me as a result of it was type of like you would put headphones on and disappear into this different world,” he mentioned of the music.
