Matmos
Trip Hop / Electronica
'The Civil War' is the new album by San Francisco electronic duo Matmos. A
hallucinatory double exposure of medieval English folk and 19th century
Americana, The Civil War finds Matmos experimenting with a dramatically
different palette from their critically acclaimed exploration of medical
technology 'A Chance to Cut Is A Chance to Cure'. Though there's nary a
scalpel in sight, their humorous cut-up sensibility and willingness to take
risks remains intact. In a time when most electronic artists seem desperate
to ape the sounds of 1983 as closely as possible, Matmos have tried to make
the 2003 version of the 1990 version of the 1968 version of the 1860 version
of the 1590s. Across the nine tracks on 'The Civil War', production styles
and instrumentation keep telescoping backwards and projecting forwards,
producing weirdly anachronistic dialogues: medieval jigs and reels joust
against country and western twang, and pastoral acoustic folk gets
pistolwhipped by crisp digital editing techniques.
A guerilla assault on rock, folk, and country maneuvers, 'The Civil War'
keeps lines of communication open across genres and periods. If the opener
"Regicide"'s keening hurdy gurdy recalls the Incredible String Band's
psychedelic medievalism,the ambling piano line of "For the Trees" sounds
like a distant cousin of honky tonk pianist Floyd Cramer's swooning
instrumentals. Songs mutate and reverse direction: "Y.T.T.E" starts with
tumbling big band drums that recall Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life", gatecrashes
a Boredoms drumcircle, lilts into Chet Atkins twang, and finally scuttles to
a close in minimalist soundfile manipulation. Deceptively "pretty" on the
surface, it's music that struggles against itself and occasionally
collapses, breaking down into amorphous skeins of noise, dissolving into raw
field recordings of cicadas in the trees and Fourth of July fireworks, and,
in "Pelt and Holler", unexpectedly jump-cutting to total silence. While much
of this album's focus on untreated and close mic-ed acoustic instruments
suggest a pickin' session on a Southern porch, the mellowness is peppered
with peaks of scaldingly bright and extreme sonics. On this recording M. C.
Schmidt and guest member Keith Fullterton Whitman (aka Hrvatski) had the
opportunity to use one of the original Serge modular synthesizers built by
Ivan Tcherepnin; its piercing squeals ricochet across the military drumrolls
of "Reconstruction".
As their compositional appetite grew more ambitious and expansive, Matmos
decided to bring in more musically gifted reinforcements from across
America. Among others, Steve Goodfriend and Jim Putnam of Radar Bros. sit in
on drums and guitar respectively, Jay Lesser plucked the dobro, Tim Barnes
offered drum source samples, improv guitar manipulator Keenan Lawler
ventured into the sewer pipes of Louisville, Kentucky for a subterranean
steel guitar recording, fellow Louisville alumnus David Grubbs contributed
piano, with a little coaxing Blevin Blectum added violin, and, providing the
lion's share of guest contributions, Mark Lightcap (formerly of Acetone, now
playing with Hope Sandoval) played tuba, peck horn, banjo, and heaps of
electric and acoustic guitar. That said, Matmos' trademark ear for highly
unorthodox sample sources endures: "Pelt and Holler" is made almost entirely
out of the sound of a rabbit pelt, while "The Struggle Against Unreality
Begins" features the sound of the blood in M. C. Schmidt's carotid artery.
Balancing baroquely detailed production against passages of stark
single-instrument simplicity, Matmos have pushed themselves in an
unexpected, and surprisingly tuneful, new direction. Part Canterbury tale
and part Southern Gothic, 'The Civil War' eludes easy categories but rewards
careful listening, responding to present tensions with historical
imagination and sly wit.
Matmos is M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel. They have toured with Lesser,
Labradford, The Rachels and Bjork, shared stages with Terry Riley and Wire,
remixed The Melvins and Otomo Yoshihide (and most recently Erase Errata),
and are still working on an ongoing collaborative project with The Kronos
Quartet. They have taught seminars on sound art at Harvard University and
DJed at proms for homeless teenagers. They have had pieces in the Whitney
Museum of American Art, and have scored the soundtracks for five gay porn
films. They are currently on tour with Bjork, and in November they are
scheduled to present their first installation at the Yerba Buena Museum of
Contemporary Art in San Francisco.
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