To be immediately dismissive does no one any good. Really. At first blush, Matmos’ newest album (and their 7th overall) Supreme Balloon seems to count on there being, like P.T. Barnum allegedly said, one born every minute—a sucker that is. It amounts to one pop keyboard gadget after another, layered into familiar song structures (Euro-chamber pop, or dance, to mention a few) proving very quickly that a simple glance can sometimes be terribly misleading. But that’s only on first blush. On repeated listens, buried under some of those gadgets and distractions there is a track—one, single, lone desperado here that can best be described as “quietly redemptive.”
Can it make good the rest of the record? Maybe not the entire album, as most of it feels far beyond repair, but the title track, “Supreme Balloon” seems to carry forth everything that Matmos was going for on their 7-track LP. It’s soft and textured, building into a gradually delightful stratum over a 24-minute, near operatic structure (on a programming note, the album’s other six songs have a total time of less than 20 minutes…hmmmm?). One wonders why the band didn’t just release a single/EP with only the title song, as the others seem to only dissuade the listener that Matmos is anywhere they need to be. Digging in for further gems in this album, a pop expression of the loosely established genre, “musique concrete” isn’t a task for everyone.
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