Chad Randall Matheny

Chad Randall Matheny, known professionally as Emperor X, is an American singer and songwriter. He has been based in Berlin, Germany since 2012. Matheny got his start in music when he was given a Casio SK-1 by his grandparents at age nine, and recorded his first album on a Tascam four-track before the age of 20.

Matheny tours across the United States regularly and performs around the world as well, including tours in Mexico, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

In a self-described attempt to "address the diminishing utility of physical copies of music and the expanding role of marketing in the experience of art", Matheny often hides or buries one-off physical copies and associated visual artwork of b-sides at GPS coordinates and posts them online as a part of a geocaching game to unlock MP3 copies of the audio. For the release of the 2011 Emperor X album Western Teleport, 41 "translucent purple audio cassettes" were buried across North America, many of which remain undiscovered. This received a feature on NPR's "Weekend Edition" program.

In 2012, he left the United States for Berlin, where he found that the country's trains helped him tour easier as a near-blind musician.

In 2020, Matheny and Christian Holden from The Hotelier started an artist-managed record label cooperative known as Dreams of Field Recordings.

Personal life Matheny is a former high school science teacher, and in 2004 he stopped his pursuit of a master's degree in physics in order to dedicate his career to music.

Matheny is a testicular cancer survivor and has low vision, which makes him unable to legally drive.

Discography

Full-length albums The Joytakers' Rakes/Stars on the Ceiling, Pleasantly Kneeling (1998, self-released) Tectonic Membrane/Thin Strip on an Edgeless Platform (2004, Discos Mariscos) Oversleepers International (2017, Tiny Engines) The Lakes of Zones B and C (2022) Unified Field (2026)

EPs and singles Wuss/Strike/River/Preacher/Magnet/God/Unwuss (2006) Dirt Dealership (2007) Defiance (for Elise Sunderhuse) (2010) Brown Recluse/At a Rave with Nicolas Sarkozy (2013) 10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Resettlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories (2014) Wasted on the Senate Floor (2016) Sad React (2020, Dreams of Field Recordings) United Earth League of Quarantine Aerobics (2020, Dreams of Field Recordings) – as Chad Matheny Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor (2023) Renee Nicole Nicole Renee (2026) Pissing With the Flashlight On (2026)

Tour-only releases Gasheater/Raytracer (2004) East Coast and Freedom From/Freedom To (2004) Everyone in Jacksonville (2006) Australia Tour Tape (2010) Several New Songs in Various Digital Formats (2011)