"..delirious concepts.."
Matmos
Absurd Accent Analyzers
Matmos Bio:
Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others. Currently based in Baltimore, the duo formed in San Francisco in the mid 1990s, and self-released their debut album in 1997. Marrying the conceptual tactics and noisy textures of object-based musique concrete to a rhythmic matrix rooted in electronic pop music, the two quickly became known for their highly unusual sound sources: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, cigarettes, cards shuffling, laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions, balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones, Polish trains, insects, life support systems, inflatable blankets, rock salt, solid gold coins, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms, and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by the group’s large circle of friends and collaborators. The result is a model of electronic composition as a relational network that connects sources and outcomes together; information about the process of creation activates the listening experience, providing the listener with entry points into sometimes densely allusive, baroque recordings. Since their debut, Matmos have released over eight albums, including: Quasi-Objects (1998) , The West (1998), A Chance to Cut Is A Chance to Cure (2001), The Civil War (2003) and The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of A Beast (2006) and Supreme Balloon (2008). In 2001 they were asked to collaborate with the Icelandic singer Bjork on her “Vespertine” album, and subsequently embarked on two world tours as part of her band. In addition to musical collaborations with Antony, So Percussion, David Tibet, the Rachel’s, Lesser, Wobbly, Zeena Parkins, and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, Matmos have also collaborated with a wide range of artists across disciplines, from the visual artist Daria Martin (on the soundtrack to her film “Minotaur”) to the playwright Young Jean Lee (for her play “The Appeal”) to Berlin-based choreographer Ayman Harper. Most recently, they have been part of the ensemble for the Robert Wilson production “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic”, featuring Marina Abramovic, Antony and Willem Dafoe. Their next album, The Marriage of True Minds, will be released in 2013 by Thrill Jockey Records
Hello, how are you?
Drew: I am feeling manic.
Martin: At ease, though there is much to do preparing for the public enjoyment of our new record...right now photo editing and making handmade cards to go into the special editions of our introductory EP/single (whatever it's formal format designation is!) "The Ganzfeld EP"
What are you currently listening to?
Drew: I'm currently listening to the steady purr of air conditioning in the attic of our house, and from downstairs I can still make out the record that's playing: the Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza album "The Feedback", which is an oddity for them, it's got these chunky funk drums and their skronky free music playing on top. Martin: Helmut Lachenmann' "Mouvement" on YouTube as we have just returned from the Darmstadt Ferienkurse for New Music and apparently this fellow is very important for a lot of composers, and I had never listened to any, so... If you mean in general, the environment at Darmstadt is very dense, musically, so wow, we heard a lot of stuff...the two best things I heard were John Cage's "As Slow as Possible" and pieces that I can't remember the names of by a crazy cool young man/composer called Johannes Kreidler...look 'm up on You Tube, I tried to find a particular thing to recommend, but I fell down the rabbit hole...so I suggest you do the same!
I've taught two lecture courses in the English Department at Hopkins, one on Shakespeare and one on "British Literature I" (a survey course) that goes from Chaucer to Spenser to Milton to Pope. In the process of which I rant/talk about a vast range of things: renaissance literature first and foremost, but in and through that magic, colonialism, psychoanalysis, chivalry, poetic meter, queer sex, capitalism, rhetorical figures, pagan gods, Jesus Christ, suicide, friendship, slasher films, classical epic, venereal disease, feminism, currency policy, social hierarchies, monstrosity, ugly and beautiful bodies, literature as fetish etc. As Matmos we sometimes "lecture" (in a super loose way) about our own music, musique concrete, how to make recordings and why, the history of various mediums and media, records we love.
I wrote a book about Throbbing Gristle because I fell in love with their music at the age of 16 and haven't been able to let it go ever since, and I felt that they would do something odd and critical to the premise of the series as a whole by being inserted into that list. They seem to me to be usefully opposed to the "greatness" rhetoric that tends to accompany that kind of fandom. Their work is hard to read, self-contradicting in a way that felt like it was worth writing about, some art is very strong but it doesn't merit lots of unpacking. I think their work seems in certain ways "weaker" than the canonical albums in that series but that's is the source of its odd power.
What is the theme for your upcoming EP and will you be touring for it? The EP is an introduction to the concerns that drive the album as well. The EP comes out in October and the album in early 2013. We won't be really touring that material until the spring because I will be on sabbatical then, but we will have a few select shows in Baltimore, New York and London in connection with the EP. The EP and the album have the same conceptual basis: telepathy. For the past four years we have been conducting parapsychological experiments based upon the classic Ganzfeld (“total field”) experiment, but with a twist: instead of sending and receiving simple graphic patterns, test subjects were put into a state of sensory > deprivation by covering their eyes and listening to white noise on headphones, and then I attempted to transmit “the concept of the new Matmos record” directly into their minds. During videotaped psychic experiments conducted at home in Baltimore and at Oxford University, test subjects were asked to describe out loud anything they saw or heard within their minds as Drew attempted transmission. The resulting transcripts became a kind of score that was then used to generate music. If a subject hummed something, that became a melody; passing visual images suggested arrangement ideas, instruments, or raw materials for a collage; if a subject described an action, then we had to act out that out and make music out of the noises generated in the process of the re-enactment. It was very labor intensive and very fun.
How do you guys come up with your sound concepts (such as a snail slithering past a light sensitive theremin)? I bet you have some interesting brain-storming sessions don't you?
Drew: There are lots of discussions, arguments, moods, temporary obsessions and long burning passions that move in and out focus. Deadlines and feelings of guilt and stress can be assets because they crystallize your vague sense that something might be worth exploring more, it helps when there is a gun to your head and you MUST choose something, you MUST decide if an idea is good or not, because that stops the endlessness of discussion. Sometimes there are blind alleys and one of the two of us has to point this out to the other, which is painful. I would like to think that the strongest sounds and concepts survive and that the weaker stuff drops out as it is subjected to scrutiny. One thing that happens quite often is that we'll get obsessed with something, make a piece, and then test it in front of audiences quite a bit before committing to it becoming a song for a record, in this case we're a bit more like a Rock band than an Electronic band, I suppose. But "brainstorming" sounds like a corporate marketing meeting, and I would hope that what we do is often driven more by intuition, stumbling, drift and free association.
What movie would work best on mute while listening to your music?
You can only keep/listen to ONE album for the rest of your life ..which album would it be?
Martin: Terre Thaemlitz's new full length 'Soulnessless'? It's 32 hours long...
Are you living your dream?
Drew: This question prompts a memory of a friend who lived in a rough, crime-ridden building who stumbled onto a prostitute servicing a john in a stairwell. Annoyed at the intrusion, she looked up at him and yelled "Leave us alone, damn! Can't you see I'm just living my dream?"
Martin: I try to take things as they go, so as to avoid disappointment. I really enjoy a lot of things that happen to me, though! Also, most of my dreams are very repetitive work-dreams!
Thanx Drew & Martin!
Matmos are about to release "The Ganzfeld EP" and soon after that (early next year) they will release their next LP..!
