Matmos: Music for the Sonically Epi - Cureous/Curious
I've talked about them before, but how many musicians name an album after a Michel Serres theory (Quasi-Objects)? I just downloaded an older album that I did not have, The Civil War. Full of humor and meticulous layers of sounds made by some familiar (and vaguely period) instruments, and a smattering of objects whose sounds you've heard, but never musically. Here's a description of their style from their own website:
Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others. In their recordings and live performances over the last nine years, Matmos have used the sounds of: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, water hitting copper plates, the runout groove of a vinyl record, a $5.00 electric guitar, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair,violins, rat cages, tanks of helium, violas, human skulls, cellos, peck horns, tubas, cards shuffling, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs, frequency response tests for defective hearing aids, a steel guitar recorded in a sewer, electrical interference generated by laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions and balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones on a dinner plate, Polish trains, insects, ukelele, aspirin tablets hitting a drum kit from across the room, dogs barking, people reading aloud, life support systems and inflatable blankets, records chosen by the roll of dice, an acupuncture point detector conducting electrical current through human skin, rock salt crunching underfoot, solid gold coins spinning on bars of solid silver, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal. [About Matmos]
The pic is of Drew Daniel sampling sounds for A Chance to Cut is A Chance to Cure.
