(Photo by Obie Feldi)
MATMOS
with special guest TBA
Thursday July 3rd at Art Sanctuary
1443 S. Shelby Street
Louisville, KY USA
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show
Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; physical tickets available for in-person purchase at Surface Noise Records (cash only)
18+
8:00 PM doors
9:00 PM music
Based in Baltimore, MATMOS is Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. The two have been making music as MATMOS since 1997, first in San Francisco, and then relocating to Baltimore in 2007 when Daniel began to teach at Johns Hopkins University. They are respected, innovative auteurs in the world of electronic music and sampling culture whose very first album was hailed as “entering electronics Valhalla” by the WIRE magazine for sampling highly unusual sound sources such as the amplified nerve tissue of crayfish. Ever since, they have made music out a wildly heterogeneous set of objects and sources, including the sound of 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, snails interrupting the path of a laser and altering the pitch of a light sensitive theremin, a PVC police riot shield, silicone breast implants, and their own washing machine. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by internationally celebrated guest musicians from their 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 that have the direct sensory immediacy of pop music.
MATMOS have collaborated with a wide array of artists across media and distinct disciplines. A partial list of musical collaborators includes Bjork, The Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, Marshall Allan (Sun Ra Arkestra), So Percussion, Anohni, Yo La Tengo, The Rachel’s, Oneohtrix Point Never, Jefferson Friedman, Zeena Parkins, J.G. Thirlwell, Jeff Carey, Wobbly, David Tibet, and Mouse On Mars.
MATMOS’s practice of creative constraint has made them one of the most consistently exciting acts in electronic music. Their new album Metallic Life Review is the sound of two people who have collected field recordings of metal objects from around the world for years of their lives together, collaging their magpie hoard into rhythmic patterns, sometimes writing melodies and basslines, but sometimes just letting sound be sound. Metallic Life Review features the late Susan Alcorn’s pedal steel, Owen Gardner’s (Horse Lords) glockenspiel, Thor Harris’ drumming, Jason Willett’s (Half Japanese) guitar, and Jeff Carey’s aluminum cans, which were melted, molded into custom aluminum rods, and then bowed and struck. The most dramatic difference from any previous Matmos album is that side two was recorded “live in the studio”, ala Throbbing Gristle’s Heathen Earth. For the first time on recording, Matmos capture the evolving, shifting, slithering dynamic that happens when they play live and let patterns emerge out of chaos and then collapse and then re-form. Their playful blend of compositional brilliance and improvisational playfulness meld perfectly, truly capturing ecstatic moments in a way that can only happen live.
MATMOS on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/xmatmosx/
https://www.instagram.com/folkwisdom_music/
https://www.facebook.com/matmosband
https://www.facebook.com/folkwisdom.net
https://www.instagram.com/thrilljockey/
https://www.facebook.com/ThrillJockey