The Literal Sounds Of Plastic On Matmos’s Plastic Anniversary

Thrill Jockey
Reviewed by John Payne

In music, in general, combining high conceptual aims with what we call accessibility (a troublesome concept on its own) is not an easy thing to pull off. My no-doubt annoyingly subjective list of musicians who’ve achieved a balancing in this equation (ear-friendliness + modernity) would include, say, Robert Wyatt, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Jon Hassell, Holger Czukay, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Terje Rypdal, Annette Peacock, Diamanda Galás, Coil and the Velvet Underground. This varied bunch shares the notion of basing the work on musical or thematic ideas, and in so doing not skimping on the soul; the goal is a kind of beauty.

Having long specialized in heavily concept-laden albums, Matmos fall roughly into this category of the musical boundary-smasher who makes music that’s genuinely musical and doesn’t stray into (though related) “sound art” realms. Matmos — the now Baltimore-based (previously San Francisco) duo of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel — released Quasi-Object in 1998, and it featured the sound of a dissected crayfish and lightly rubbed rabbit fur, among other biological things. Their 2001 album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure sculpted witty dance tracks out of sampled and rhythmatized sounds that emanated from the body. These pulpy, surgical sploshes of unfamiliar sonority were intricately edited, looped, degraded and enhanced into supremely melodic, peppy-beated sort of alterna-populist techno tunes.