Matt Tong facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Matt Tong
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Tong in 2007
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Matthew Chee Hung Tong |
| Born | 29 April 1979 |
| Origin | Bournemouth, Dorset, England |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | Musician |
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| Years active | 2002–present |
Matthew Chee Hung Tong (born 29 April 1979) is a British musician from Bournemouth, England. He is best known as the drummer of Bloc Party from 2002 to 2013 and has been the drummer for Algiers since 2015.
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Early life
Tong was born in Bournemouth, England to a British mother and a Malaysian father. He is a public supporter of the Bournemouth F.C. football team.
Career
Tong joined Bloc Party in 2002, being chosen from eight other contenders for the role. On 9 November 2006, Tong suffered a collapsed lung after opening for Panic! at the Disco in Atlanta and was admitted to the hospital, causing Bloc Party to miss the next few shows on the tour. Tong said in 2009, "I wouldn't mind trying something else for a while" regarding the uncertainty of Bloc Party's future. Tong left Bloc Party during the band's summer 2013 tour, after recording four albums with the band. Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke alluded to simmering tensions that had been boiling up behind the scenes that were never verbalised. In 2022, Okereke said "I don’t really want either of them in my life right now" of Tong and bassist Gordon Moakes, who also left Bloc Party in 2015 after 13 years.
Tong played the drums on No Devotion's 2015 debut album Permanence, stepping in to finish the final four songs after Luke Johnson left the band in the middle of recording. Tong also drummed in a new band L'Amour Bleu under the alias "She-Tong". He also formed the band Red Love with producer Alex Newport, whose debut album came out in 2017.
In 2015, Tong joined the band Algiers, first as a touring member before being brought on as the band's permanent drummer.
In 2022, Tong played on the song "Frankenstein" from Rina Sawayama's second album Hold the Girl. Sawayama asked producer/songwriter Paul Epworth, who had produced the Bloc Party albums Silent Alarm and Intimacy, to recruit Tong for the song. Sawayama said that Tong was an inspiration to her as a fellow Asian in the music industry. Tong's hands were covered in blood following the recording.
Drumming style
Tong described himself as "notoriously sloppy at timekeeping". He wrote the drum parts on Silent Alarm as alternating between high and low intensity to give himself a physical break. Tong said that he was not an athletic person and always struggled at sports, so drumming became too fast for his own comfort. During live performances, he becomes a "mood drummer" who changes the speed of his performance based on crowd reaction.
Personal life
Tong has lived in New York City since 2010.
Tong married Brooke Vermillion, the touring DJ of Kindness, in 2006.
