Matthew O’Neill Announces ‘Through to Us’ A New Collection of Experimental Compositions Out October 16 via Panther Mountain
Matthew O’Neill is a Catskill Mountains-based composer, sound artist, songwriter, and cultural producer whose work moves between rock and roll, experimental composition, field recording, and soundscape ecology. He is also the founder and executive director of Panther Mountain, a nonprofit music label and cultural restoration initiative supporting Indigenous artists, ancestral listening practices, and reciprocal relationships with land and community. Rooted in Indigenous musical ontologies, O’Neill approaches music as more than entertainment, using sound as a way to explore relationships with land, water, memory, ancestry, and the larger ecological systems surrounding us.
Combining field recordings with guitar, voice, synthesis, acoustic instrumentation, and alternative recording techniques, O’Neill treats the natural environment as an active participant in his creative process. His work encourages a deeper form of listening in which sound, silence, duration, and attention reveal connections between human experience and the more-than-human world, positioning music as a living practice of awareness, reciprocity, and connection.
“It’s central to maintaining balance as a culture and a person. The biggest part of my practice over the years has been creating music in reciprocity with the land and all the life around me. There’s no separation between the listening and the making. It’s a circle of relationship-building and creating through listening.”
Matthew O’Neill has announced his new album, Through to Us, arriving October 16 via his nonprofit label Panther Mountain. Blending electro-acoustic composition, ambient music, microtonality, and soundscape, the album was shaped through O’Neill’s practice of deep listening and direct engagement with land, water, and the unseen. Field recordings, synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and alternative recording techniques come together across the record, with the environment treated not simply as a backdrop but as an active collaborator in the creative process.
Alongside the announcement, O’Neill shared the title track and accompanying video, recorded at his home in the Catskill Mountains with the doors and windows of his wooden studio left open to the surrounding landscape. Responding intuitively with synthesizer and piano while incorporating sounds created with metal bars, cedar logs, antler, and wet stone, O’Neill describes “Through to Us” as an arrival in his compositional practice—one exploring how sound, place, synchronicity, and presence can connect listeners with something beyond what is immediately visible or understood.
Make sure you check out the title track “Through To Us” on YouTube below and over on your streaming platform!
Need more Matthew O’Neil? Follow on Socials!
Matthew O’Neil
Website | Instagram | Bandcamp | YouTube | Bio
Are there any other projects/albums/movies that you think we should check out? Let us know in the comments! Make sure to follow Modern Neon Media on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube!
Also, we now have a Discord! Feel free to join the community, and if you have singles you want us to feature you can connect with us there!
Who am I? Just some guy who decided to start writing on the Internet years ago and now operates his own brand and site. Owner/Operator of Modern Neon Media, I make all kinds of niche content to suit my interests at the time. DIY Enthusiast, Brewmaster extraordinaire, and avid freak for geek culture. Follow on my socials for a more “on” version of me.
