The l ong-running electronic duo Matmos have actually simply launched a stunning brand-new LP, Concerns/ Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer Whereas their previous album, 2020’s The Consuming Flame: Open Workouts in Group Type, saw the couple collaging contributions from 99 pals tape-recorded at 99 bpm, their newest is committed to the work of simply a single person: Polish polymath Bogusław Schaeffer ( 1929-2019). In this episode, we talk about how their credibility for conceptualism has actually frequently served to obscure the official qualities of their work. Can an item be an idea? Is “cleaning device” or “plastic” an idea? With their signature mix of severe humor, the set assess visiting with a cleaning device, the functionalities of licensing music, and the intricacies of dealing with Schaeffer’s archive.

Episode 25: IRREGARDS

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Interview tape-recorded in between Baltimore and Montreal, April 2022
Produced and blended in New york city, May 2022

SP * at Anchor

Matmos is M.C. (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel Established in the San Francisco Bay Location in 1993, the duo have actually made a track record for a practically fanatical dedication to their conceptual technique to music. While the group have actually continued to progress and press their music in brand-new instructions, there is nevertheless a Matmos noise identifiable throughout their prolonged discography: tight modifying, glitchy rhythms, and a particular funny bone so frequently missing out on in electronic music (and music in basic, if we’re sincere). They’re likewise a delight to interview, as evidenced by the large quantity of laughter in this episode.

Like lots of others, I initially heard Matmos through their deal with Björk‘s Vespertine (2001 ), though I didn’t understand it at the time. Following a remix for the Icelandic popstar in 1998, the duo contributed production on that album and Medúlla (2004 ), joining her touring band ( They show up with their backs to the audience throughout this 2001 Tonight Program efficiency; note Martin touching Drew with a contact microphone.) These cooperations with Björk are a sign of Matmos’ skill at merging pop and progressive perceptiveness, a mélange continuously restored with each brand-new job.

In a 2017 discussion in between Matmos and Alvin Curran released by RBMA, the duo each share sonic memories from youth that supply effective encapsulations of their visual. Martin remembers that “every Sunday early morning I would get up to the noise of jet airplanes landing, a circular saw, an opera showed up loud sufficient to hear over the circular saw.” Drew matured beside a funeral house, and “on the other side of the funeral house were train tracks. I believe I share that sense that hearing the musicality and motion through area of noise was simply a provided prior to I understood anything about the origin story of musique concrete itself.” While the history of progressive music would later on supply some sort of permission for their own activities, Matmos is driven more by practice than theory.

The band has actually been based in Baltimore, where Daniel is an English teacher, because 2007. And while there is a specific intellectualism and conceptual rigor to their work, there’s absolutely nothing “scholastic” about their music. Like a gayer Nurse With Injury infiltrated an eccentric dance flooring perceptiveness, Matmos’ music is irregularly metered, smart, and frequently playfully morbid (see 2001’s An Opportunity to Cut is a Possibility to Treat, consisted of the noises of numerous surgeries.) Subsequent albums have frequently pursued comparable methods of a limited noise source grounded in a clear idea. For example, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Monster (2006) profiled the lives of numerous queer historic figures, while Supreme Balloon (2008) traded samples for classic synthesizer expeditions.

Both a band and a couple, Matmos is a distinctively collective job. (In a current function on Bandcamp, Daniel yields that “Our relationship and the band are sort of the very same thing.”) Still, throughout their profession the band have actually frequently generated extra partners. All the product on Work, Work, Work ( 2006) was chosen from a 97-hour live efficiency at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center, for which they employed the assistance of pals consisting of Shaky, Sutekh ( Rrose), Michael Brown, and Security Scissors, a lot of whom have actually stayed partners in the years because. Treasure State (2010) saw Matmos coupled with Sō Percussion, everyone’s preferred brand-new music percussion quartet. The Consuming Flame (2020) took their fondness for partnership to a rather outrageous level ( simply take a look at this company chart!), welcoming 99 pals to send them brief structures, the only guideline being a constant beat of 99 bpm.

2013’s The Marital Relationship of Real Minds ( the title is a referral to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116) was their very first studio album following their cross nation relocation, and took 4 years to finish. They employed lots of partners for this job also, who were taken into a state of sensory deprivation and asked to react to numerous triggers based upon the Ganzfeld experiment, utilized by parapsychologists to evaluate for extrasensory understanding (ESP). In our interview, Martin discusses that such a prolonged production cycle started to appear excessively self-indulgent, and the rate of their studio albums has actually gotten in the years because.

Ultimate Care II ( 2016) was tape-recorded utilizing absolutely nothing however the noise of their cleaning device of the very same name, which accompanied Matmos throughout their trip of Europe and The United States And Canada. A more vegan friendly variation of Matthew Herbert and his pig, each night the band would obtain a short article of clothes from an audience member which they would clean throughout their set. ( Michael Brown rigged up the water pump that made visiting with a cleaning device a possibility.) Made on the celebration of the couple’s 25th anniversary, Plastic Anniversary ( 2019) continued their expedition of a minimal noise source, tasting just the noise of numerous plastic things. ( We enjoyed the video explainers they produced that record!)

However are these fanatical sonic expeditions of things “principles”? Maybe they’re much better comprehended merely as techniques of framing each job, supplying needed restrictions to control the otherwise unlimited possible paid for by modern-day music making. Martin recommends the latter, confessing that there’s something “foolish” about making a cleaning device album, and revealing hope that such a ridiculous idea would motivate listeners to rather listen more thoroughly to the music. Maybe it’s paradoxical, then, that the most success they have actually had at distancing themselves from their conceptual credibility is when their music is taken totally out of context; accredited for NASCAR commercials or episodes of Leading Equipment

After the tiresome procedure of making up the 3 hour-long suites of Taking In Flame, for their next album the duo matched down to simply one partner: Bogusław Schaeffer Born in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), like lots of artists and artists who worked behind the so-called Iron Drape, Schaeffer’s music is unknown outside his native nation. Michal Mendyk of the Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza in Warsaw (a company committed to the promo of Polish culture, approximately comparable to Germany’s Goethe Institute or Spain’s Cervantes Institute) approached the group, believing they would be an excellent suitable for a task providing open access to the archive of the late Polish author. However unlike The Rose Has Teeth, with Concerns/ Ukłony Matmos do not attempt to represent the life of the author, rather mining his abundant and complicated music for minutes that would make expressive samples.

The procedure started with the assembly of a sample package of Schaeffer’s noises for Ableton Live. I had some enjoyable experimenting with the package myself, and consisted of a few of my noodling loops in this episode. I discovered the choral samples especially stunning. I likewise delighted in the window into Daniel’s mind, seeing how the package was set out, and the classifications he designed for organizing them, such as Sound, Bonk, Texture, Occasions, and so on

Schaeffer belonged to the progressive “Cracow Group,” however unlike his fellow Krzysztof Penderecki, his work stays mostly unidentified beyond Poland. As Martin discusses in this episode, when Schaeffer is understood it is frequently for his usage of perfectly developed graphic ratings. The set chose versus dealing with Schaeffer’s graphic ratings early on in the production of Concerns/ Ukłony, rather creating unexpected brand-new kinds from the product. (Those ratings are referenced in Robert Beatty‘s expressive cover art, and can be checked out through the Non-Stop app) Matmos then continued to make up a whole album making use of tested product, and the outcome is possibly the strangest installation in their years long profession.

Concerns/ Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer is neither ‘Matmos plays Boguslaw Schaeffer,’ nor a collection of remixes, however takes the group even more afield still. A suite of 8 brand-new tunes bridging the utopian 1960s Polish progressive with our modern dystopia, and lots of designs in between. The album is not a lot ageless as unfortunate. It does not seem like a lost work from the 1960s, however it withstands simple classification. The very first 4 tracks manifest the balanced perceptiveness we relate to Matmos, while the 2nd half takes an unforeseen turn, more rooted in textural subtlety.

A number of the tune titles are anagrams of Schaeffer’s name, paralleling Matmos’ official technique to the music. They likewise employed extra assistance from a couple of pals, consisting of Irish harpist Úna Monaghan, Turkish multi-instrumentalist Ulas Kurugullu, and electronic procedures from Baltimore instrument contractor Will Schorre and Horse Lord’s Max Eilbacher That stated, it’s not apparent where the samples of Schaeffer’s music end and their contributions start. Regardless of their fondness for openness, Matmos continue to keep us thinking.

AVAILABLE HERE

LINKS
Matmos
Bandcamp
Adventure Jockey
Bogusław Schaeffer

TRACKLIST
ARTIST– “TITLE” ( ALBUM, LABEL, YEAR)

Matmos– “Anti-Antiphon( Outright Decay)/ Anty-Antyfona (Dekonstrukcja_na_całego)” [excerpt] ( Concerns/ Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, Adventure Jockey, 2022)

SP INTRODUCTION

Matmos introduction collage + Barbarella Matmos clip (1968 )

Matmos– “Anti-Antiphon (Outright Decay)/ Anty-Antyfona (Dekonstrukcja na całego)” [excerpt] ( Concerns/ Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, Adventure Jockey, 2022)

Matmos– “A DOUGHNUT IN THE SKY” ( The Consuming Flame: Open Workouts in Group Type, Adventure Jockey, 2020)

Matmos– “Flight to Sodom/ Lot do Salo” ( Concerns/ Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, Adventure Jockey, 2022)

Tune that my Whirlpool stackable cleaning device plays (2022 )

Matmos– [opening excerpt] ( Ultimate Care II, Adventure Jockey, 2016)

Matmos– “Constantly 3 Words” ( quasi-objects, unclear surface, 1998)

Matmos– “Keepsake Mori” ( An Opportunity to Cut Is a Possibility to Treat, Matador, 2001)

Matmos clip from Leading Equipment: Series 5, Episode 9, Ariel Atom 46:09– 46:40 (2004 )

Matmos– “Plastic Minor” ( Matmos, Unclear Surface, 1997)

Matmos– “You (Rrose Mix)” ( The Ganzfeld EP, Adventure Jockey, 2012)

Matmos– “Cobra Earnings Shuffle/ Off! Schable w gurę!” ( Concerns/ Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, Adventure Jockey, 2022)

Matmos– “Looking For A Lost Professors” ( The Marital Relationship Of Real Minds, Adventure Jockey, 2013)

Joseph Sannicandro– Improv with Matmos’ Bogusław Schaeffer Ableton sample package (2022 )

Bogusław Schaeffer– “Berlin 80 II” ( Inventionen: Berlin 80 II/ Fabulas II/ Inventio, Edition RZ, 1985)

Matmos– [late excerpt] ( Ultimate Care II, Adventure Jockey, 2016)

Matthew Herbert– “August 2010” ( ONE PIG, Accidental, 2011)

Matmos– “Extending The Plastisphere To GJ237b ( Plastic Anniversary, Adventure Jockey, 2019)

Jennifer Veillerobe– “B3” ( Luftlöcher, Senufo, 2013)

Run The Jewels– “Creown (Alchemist Remix)” ( Meow The Jewels, Mass Appeal, 2015)

Terry Fox– “The Maze Scored for the Purrs of 11 Various Felines” [excerpt] ( Tellus # 21– Anthology Of Audio By Visual Artists, Tellus, 1988)

Alvin Curran– [Side A, opening excerpt] ( Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri, Ananda, 1978)

Count Dooku clips from Star Wars: Episode III– Vengeance of the Sith (2005 )

Matmos– “Part VII. The Yard” (ROBERT ASHLEY’s Perfect Lives: Baltimore, 3/28/17)

Pierluigi Billone– “excerpt” ( 1 + 1 = 1, Kairos, 2006)

Ivan Catteneo– “Kiss me I’m italian” ( Urlo, CGD, 1980)

Matmos– “The Little Individuals have existed and done your work fingers light and cold as spring wind through the spaces (Matmos and Michael Brown)” ( Work Work Work, Unclear Surface, 2006)

M.C. Schmidt– “Lowland Side” ( Batu Malablab, Loudspeaker/ Knock ’em Dead, 2015)

The Soft Pink Reality– “Area Previously Inhabited by An Amebix Cover However Fuck That Person for Being a Holocaust Denier” ( Am I Complimentary To Go?, self-released, 2020)

Joseph Sannicandro– Improv with Matmos’ Bogusław Schaeffer Ableton sample package (2022 )

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Sound Proposals is composed, tape-recorded, combined, and produced by Joseph Sannicandro