December 24, 2010
Greetings good people of the Internet. We are home from our recent sojourn in Germany, where we played six shows in Frankfurt and Berlin as the live musical accompaniment to “(theLID” a work choreographed by Ayman Harper (formerly of The Forsythe Company) and featuring Baltimore’s own Jermaine Spivey and costumes, stage and set design by Tomi Paasonen of Finland. We’re going to do some more performances of this piece in (deep breath) 2012 in Texas and in Germany, so please plan accordingly.
Jermaine Spivey struggles with the Wyrm during The Lid with Matmos accompaniment in Germany this year.
It’s been a year with major ups and some downs too. In April, we had the honor of performing at Carnegie Hall with the Kronos Quartet at their kind invitation; despite a sneaky slide guitar cable hiccup, the show was a delight. Drew’s mom was there! We will play with them again in the springtime in Scotland, no less!
Matmos with Kronos Quartet...ok this is actually at Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. but it's a lovely picture.
We also played some fun shows this year with Konk Pack, Leprechaun Catering, Sissy Spacek, the Bang on A Can all stars, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Emeralds, Dam-Funk, and lots of other folks we like at cool spaces like The Bank and the Fifth Dimension. Martin toured with his improv / noise / weirdo trio Ear, Nose and Throat across the West Coast.
Drew gave lots of academic talks about melancholy, materialism, and punk rock, published some articles about Shakespeare and masochism and demonology, and taught a seminar on Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”.
We released not one but two albums this year, both in collaboration with friends and fellow travelers of longstanding. In May, our collaborative record with So Percussion, “Treasure State” came out on Cantaloupe Records featuring cover artwork by Robert Syrett, and we hauled lotsa gear and a prickly cactus about as we toured the United States and Canada with Josh, Jason, Adam and Eric spreading the post-everything crypto-classical rhythm gospel with some help from the Lexie Mountain Boys.
Matmos and So in The U.S.A.
A smattering of the cornucopia of gear that is So.
Fat delicious Dosa in Vancouver.
In October, the collaborative record “Simultaneous Quodlibet” (see below), a three-headed monstrosity created with Wobbly and J. Lesser and featuring cover artwork by Jason Mecier, was released by Important Records. Big things really do come in small packages.
The losses this year were personal and of wildly disparate categorical “sizes”: the mysterious departure of our cat Gibson for parts unknown was followed by the death of Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, whose artistic work and personal example are an enduring beacon (“light shines darkly”). We will miss them both. This turning over of the decade prompts us to continue to work on the new Matmos album, “The Marriage of True Minds”, an ongoing four year plot which just keeps thickening. You can also expect some surprising remixes, and some concerts in the spring in the United States and Europe in the summer, but we aren’t ready yet to get all TMI about that yet.
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November 15, 2010
Boundry Walls from High Zero 2010
Here is one of the performances from The High Zero Festival that we (in this case, just M.C.S.) were involved in. See below for a fuller explanation of High Zero. This improvisation threw together:
M.C. Schmidt playing hi-hat, scrape-y things, egg timer, voice and v-synth,
Mike Muniak playing Mackie 1604 mixer feedback,
Keith Fullerton Whitman with his Doepfer modular synth system and
Dragos Tara using unknown software on a laptop.
There was no preparation or discussion between the players beforehand. You probably don’t want to play this while a baby or invalid is trying to sleep.
Clockwise from UL, Mike Muniak, K.F. Whitman, Dragos Tara, M.C. Schmidt Photos by Stewart Mostowski
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November 6, 2010
Some years ago we participated in the filming of a documentary about music. It has reached fruition, and here is a link to it! Have a look!
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October 11, 2010
Rather like the seemingly random and spontaneous emergence of
carbon-based life-forms from a swirling soup of enzymes and primal
goop a long time ago, the surprisingly catchy and toe-tapping
quasi-music heard on this album started out as chaotic and
off-the-cuff group improvisations recorded while Matmos, Wobbly and J.
Lesser indulged in a West Coast tour. These improvisations were then
heavily chopped and screwed, layered onto each other, and additional
overdubs of drums, organs, and bizarre ephemera were committed to hard
drive at Snowghost Studios in Montana. As you might expect from this
three-headed monster’s collective predilections, the results throb
with vintage synthesis, plunderphonic theft, and skittering and loping
rhythmic loops that take various genres (doomy jazz, exotica,
reggaeton, musique-concrete, horspiel) hostage and then abandon them
in favor of the open road. Privileging flows and dissolves over
crowded rest stops, the result is a hallucinatory journey into the
frontiers of organized sound, where the intuitive and the
labor-intensive shake hands.
So: what is a simultaneous quodlibet, you ask? A well known web-based
source of unattributed lies and distortions tell us that “a quodlibet
is a piece of music combining several different melodies, usually
popular tunes, in counterpoint and often a light-hearted, humorous
manner. The term is Latin, meaning ‘whatever’ or literally, ‘what
pleases.’ “ It goes on to specify that, among the major types of
quodlibet, “in a simultaneous quodlibet, two or more pre-existing
melodies are combined.” Despite that prickly feeling on the back of
your neck, you can rest assured that there are no “mash-ups” on this
album: the title just felt like a high-falutin’ way to talk about the
layering of multiple streams of potentially unrelated sonic ectoplasm
that somehow feel “right” when placed on top of each other, a layering
that took place in the intuitive moment of improvisation and again in
the eternity of studio re-workings that ensued later. If you put the
above quotation in an N+7 generator, you get: “A quodlibet is a piggy
of mutation combining several different memos, usually popular turds,
in counterpoint and often a light-year-hearted, humorous mantel. The
terrapin is Latin, meaning “whatever” or literally, “what pleases.” “
Which is closer to the truth.
But who made that astonishing cover illustration/construction? The cover is a
collage portrait of America’s funnywoman Phyllis Diller, executed by
Jason Mecier out of the personal effects and discarded property of Ms.
Diller, with her consent. (We don’t know if Spike also consented.)
Jason is responsible for the portrait of Patricia Highsmith
constructed entirely out of snails and cigarettes that was used as one
of the portraits within the artwork for the Matmos album “The Rose Has
Teeth In the Mouth of A Beast.” He is no stranger to demanding,
labor-intensive procedures, and no stranger to some of our planet’s
most intriguing celebrity garbage cans, either.
Why is this record on vinyl? We love vinyl, and during the editing
process these works naturally took on the form of two LP-length flows
of sound. This was the most appropriate format.
Simultaneous Quodlibet, available now from your finer retailers and at Important Records.
The Dignity of Labor. Dr. Daniel, Lesser, Wobbly and M.C. Schmidt It was 109º when this photo was taken in Weed, California.
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October 5, 2010
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September 18, 2010
Halloween is the anniversary of Drew and M. C. sealing the deal and becoming a couple. We can’t remember if this year will make it 18 years (our porcelain anniversary) or 19 years (our bronze anniversary), but in either case it’s been a long ass time. And what better way to punch our way that much closer to the big 20 than piling all the gear in the car, driving for hours and rocking out onstage in front of a random gathering of thousands of strangers in Asheville, North Carolina? We’re not going to list everybody who is playing at MoogFest, but we’re pretty stoked to play at a festival that includes DEVO, Van Dyke Parks, Emeralds, Panda Bear, Dan Deacon, Dam-Funk, and Ikonika (and we will probably be all drunk and sing along with Cee Lo’s ‘Fuck You” song at the end of the night too). Anyway, Matmos does it to the crowd on Saturday night, October 30th. Go see www.moogfest.net for all the details, and ticket info and whatnot. And plan your damn costume, come on people.
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September 12, 2010
One of the grandest institutions in Baltimore is the High Zero festival, which brings normal life to a halt every year in September and cancels out rational thought in favor of a maelstrom of freaking out (aka “improvised music”). The festival is curated by the Red Room collective, of which Matmos’ M. C. Schmidt is now a very talkative member, and both M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel will be taking part in the shows this year, along with a galaxy of more talented people we can’t list here. The festival concerts begin on September 23 (John Coltrane’s birthday), and they end, finally, on September 26th (Olivia Newton-John’s birthday). This makes the High Zero Festival a Libra, suggesting that its fiery, feisty, extroverted nature is an index of powerful sidereal forces, though its position on the cusp of Virgo indexes the balance of air sign and earth sign energies, suggesting the diplomatic mixture of Baltimorean and visiting musicians kidnapped from across the globe that makes High Zero so folksy-yet-sophisto. The concerts take place at The Theatre Project at 45 W. Preston Street. Drew will play on Friday night in a four piece with Dan Deacon, Tuna Pase and Juanjosé Rivas, and on Sunday night in a four piece with Shayna Dunkelman, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Wobbly. M. C. Schmidt plays on Sunday Night in a duo with Tomoko Sauvage. But if you want to blow all the bad shit out of your mind you should just go to all of this festival. Go to Highzero.org for details and information about tickets. PS a little bird told us that the t-shirts designed for the fest this year are really trippy so come and get one.
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May 26, 2010
Yes, it’s that time of year again: Matmos is getting ready to hit the road for a North American tour, this time in support of Treasure State, their new collaborative album with So Percussion (out June 8th digital/July 13th physical on Cantaloupe Music):
JUNE
02 – Monteal, QC @ Monument National (part of MUTEK Festival)
09 – New York, NY @ (le) poisson rouge (w/ So Percussion & Lichens)
11 – Toronto, ON @ Meta Gallery (w/ So Percussion, Andrew Zuckerman & Jacob Horwood)
12 – Chicago, IL @ Museum of Contemporary Art (w/ So Percussion & TBA)
13 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center (w/ So Percussion)
17 – Seattle, WA @ The Triple Door (w/ So Percussion & Lexie Mountain Boys)
19 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret (w/ So Percussion & Lexie Mountain Boys)
20 – Portland, OR @ Holocene (w/ So Percussion & Lexie Mountain Boys)
22 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop (w/ So Percussion & Lexie Mountain Boys)
23 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo (w/ So Percussion & Lexie Mountain Boys)
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May 13, 2009
It may be a bit short to call a tour – a “tourette”, perhaps? – but
our European friends will be happy to know that Matmos will be over there
very soon for a few performances:
MAY
20 – Lyon, FR @ Nuits Sonores Festival
21 – Rennes, FR @ Antipode
22 – Paris, FR @ Cafe de la Danse
23 – Bergen, NO @ Bergen International Festival
26 & 27 – London, UK @ Village Underground (see below for details)
29 – Verona, IT @ Interzona
30 – Bologna, IT @ Locomotiv
31 – Foligno (Perugia), IT @ Young Jazz in Town Festival
JUNE
1 – Zagreb, HR @ Kset Club
2 – Beograd (Belgrade), RS @ Rex
MATMOS AND LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA
Hugh Brunt, Conductor
Supported by Sarah Nicolls and Micromattic
Tuesday 26 and Wednesday 27 May 2009, 8.00pm
Village Underground, Shoreditch
An adventurous collaboration between musical worlds is headlined by one of the giants of the electronic music scene, Matmos, performing with members of the LCO on material from Supreme Balloon arranged by the young composer Anna Meredith. In the hands of pianist Sarah Nicolls, that most familiar of instruments becomes augmented and reinvented for the 21st century, a bespoke contraption pushing at the boundaries of performance. LCO’s first commission of the season comes from Howard Quin and Micromattic, a thrilling audio-visual installation integrating live performance, electronic soundtracks and fractal animation.
Tickets available online or via Barbican Box Office: 020 7638 8891
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December 6, 2008
SATURDAY DEC 13th
MATMOS
CEX
AMI DANG
The Bank
2013 Frederick Ave
Baltimore, MD
10 pm – B.Y.O.B.
Donations at the door to pay for the new PA system.
We are super honored to be playing at the West Baltimore nerve center
and default world-navel that is the Bank. We’ve had tons of fun at
shows here and we’re way psyched to be able to kick up a ruckus in our
hometown with a special reunion of the Drew/M.C./Jay Lesser trio
formation and a (probably) quad sound system spatializing the brothers
and sisters. We love the way that the Bank describes shows so we’ll
let them take it from here, but expect good times and great oldies…
MATMOS
Champions of exposing the visceral elements in life to use as a
primary medium in creating art and music, Matmos are a world class act
that the Bank is proud and honored to showcase. Brilliant Visionaries,
Hearts of gold, Long legacy of top notch merit, these dudes got style
too, and jams that strike all sorts of nerves. A Pure Bliss to witness!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSS!!!!!!
CEX
Baltimore banger since 1981, Ryan Kidwell got the sickest beats to
make this a party till the sun shines. Smile till you drop style,
because the music makes you feel so good, just like you should because
this night is all about keeping the energy on forever.
AMI DANG
Psychedelic Sitar Shwamey. Indian Princess of the Pristine come to
massage the ears and offer them some glean.
This show is a Benefit for us to pay off the magical PA system we have.
Please come and be generous if you love our shows as much as we do.
There’ll be some Steamy drinks on the house. Otherwise BYOB.
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