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Matmos: Their psychocardiogram
readings are in perfect confluence
Drew
Daniel and M.C. Schmidt Matmos made their initial big splash with an
album called A Chance To Cut Is a Chance to Cure, which gleaned sounds that
emanated from the body (the sonorities of semen, for example), often during surgical
procedures. These sounds were intricately edited, digitally enhanced,
stacked yea high and/or looped into rhythms and, well, you just felt all these great pulpy masses
being hurled at you while you danced, maybe, and it was fascinating and
fun. After having done a stint as Bjorks electronic touring band and then
creating among other things the ornately conceptual and not so gross album The
Civil Wars,
they issued The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast, a set of tributes to 10
people they admire including William S. Burroughs, Darby Crash, Larry
Levan, Joe Meek and King Ludwig II of Bavaria which offered
sophisticated programming and beautifully bizarre textures, such as teeth
grinding, flesh being burned by cigarettes, cows eating or having their
uteruses pumped full of air with a vacuum cleaner and played like a
bagpipe. Their latest work is the synth-worshipping Supreme Balloon, which, like the duos
ideas-strewn other albums, is not weighted down by cerebral audio claptrap
(though youre invited to read a big load of cerebral literary liner-notes
claptrap that explains whats going on in the music). No, Supreme
Balloon like
all the others thumps and toots, mostly, because its fun to use your brain
and tap your toes all at the same time.
Matmos recently took
part in the L.A. Philharmonics Left Coast, West Coast events at Disney Hall in Los
Angeles, alongside and in collaboration with Terry Riley, the Kronos
Quartet and Incubus guitarist/composer Mike Einziger. Bluefat shot the breeze on the phone
with Daniel and Schmidt to get the lowdown on the upshot of what its like
to live and work in California (the formerly San Francisco-based pair now
live in Maryland), and some of this and a lot of the other. By the way, the
name Matmos refers to the swirling sea of sludge beneath the city of Sogo
in the 1968 film  Barbarella. Also, in Swedish, matmos means mashed food.
DREW
DANIEL: Im
always very reluctant to sum up California, because when you do that there
are going to be aspects of it that youll leave out of the narrative. And
if you invoke something like The Frontier, its kind of clich at this
point. Yet I still remember when I was making decision, Where do I want to
go to college? Do I want to go to Ohio or California? Little closeted me
associated California with freedom and independence, and San Francisco in
particular with experimentation. Its because in the sequence from the 50s
to the 60s to the 70s there was always a radical set of communities in
literature, in music, in sexuality, that was based here.
M.C.
SCHMIDT:
There.
DANIEL:
Yeah, sorry,
I should say there, because now I live in Maryland. Martin was born in California,
so I think he comes by it more honestly.
BLUEFAT: Is there anything
characteristically Californian about your attitude toward making music, and
the way you work?
SCHMIDT: The east coast historically
gets associated with academia, I suppose because of the sort of old-school,
hardcore Harvard Yale Ivy League business, and California, the West, was
sort of uncharted territory, untouched by or less touched by Europe or
whatnot. And certainly we are utterly untutored in the way of music. [laughs]
When
you started Matmos, did you regard yourselves as non-musicians?
DANIEL: Yeah, I started with just
tape recorders making cutups, because I was doing a punk rock scene and
cutting up images with scissors, and then I read some William S. Burroughs,
and his descriptions of his cutups, and it wasnt really because I had any
right to make music I didnt have any training that gave me a way into
an instrument, so Ive always just been approaching this as an editor, rather
than as a real musician.
SCHMIDT: We get into trouble using
those terms. You know, throwing the term real music around and what that
constitutes. We were yelled at by Bernard Parmegiani, sort of the senior
composer of musique concrte in Paris. He didnt even introduce himself to
us; he walked up to us at a show and looked us into the eyes and hes a
really intense looking guy and he said, I make real music!
DANIEL: Its very humbling and scary
to suddenly be in an institution like Walt Disney Hall on a bill with
people like the Kronos Quartet and Terry Riley, because as experimental and
as out and as free as he can let himself be in some of his work, Terry
Rileys also deeply and richly literate in a number of traditions in the
Indian classical tradition, in jazz, and in notation. And were much more
hobolike, and kind of you know, its like parking a jalopy around these
Rolls Royces or something, I mean its just very strange to me that theyve
been so welcoming and encouraging. Dont get me wrong, were grateful, but
we also perceive a pretty strong difference at the level of where were
coming from.
(continued)
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