A thirty-year career driven by an unwavering desire to find unique ways to create vibrant electronic music that constantly transcends the boundaries of what one expects to hear. This is the life’s work of Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt as Matmos, a living concept that can safely be described as a living archive of sounds—and, by extension, of memories.
Formed in San Francisco in the mid-1990s, they are now based in Baltimore, from where they continue to amaze with the way they make the sound of sound resonate. With over a dozen albums released and major collaborations under their belt (the most notable being their partnership with Björk in the early 2000s), Daniel and Schmidt create music for imaginary spaces, where reality and fantasy coexist and recognizable sounds blend with those they’ve invented. And everything returns home, to its origin, to the mundane, without ever feeling boring. Instead, it’s transformative.
Look no further than their latest album, Metallic Life Review, released last year by Thrill Jockey, composed of sounds they’ve collected over the years from all over the world. Metallic sounds, a specific category, that can relate to—or provoke a relationship with—the listener, which will vary depending on what one seeks and finds in this concept of metallic sound. A sound familiar to composition, to music; yet Matmos incorporate these sounds into phrases that connect Harry Partch to Throbbing Gristle, as well as Einstürzende Neubauten to Susan Alcorn. It sounds like electronic music, it feels like natural music, where the idea of a hybrid ceases to function and there is only the presence that this music is part of us. It has been this way since they began. It is invigorating to feel that they are still there, still surgical, more precise.
AS