MATMOS

MATMOS is the creative core of San Francisco-based couple Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt. Throughout their music career they have incorporated the work of many experimental Bay Area musicians. Together they have toured with Bjork and The Rachels, collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Kid606 and Mu-ziq, remixed Erase Errata, The Melvins, Tipsy, Iannis Xenakis and Otomo Yoshihide. Matmos drawn their influences from musique concrete and contemporary sampling, sequencing and digital signal processing techniques. The electronic duo create music from everyday instruments and through unusual sound sources. Past recordings from Matmos have built rhythmic mosaics from liposuction surgery rooms, rat cages, whoopie cushions, latex clothing and infamously, the amplified synapse of crayfish nerve tissue.

Asphodel Records hosted two evenings of live surround audio, visual performances, diffusions and past works from Francis Dhomont, Richard Chartier and Jean Francois Denis. Matmos headlined the night performing a collection of site specific pieces at the Recombinant Labs Compound. The venue has its own unique 360 degree multi-speaker and screen layout. Technological advancements have been integrated with the pioneering Trojectory Alogirithmic Generator (T.A.G.) engineered by Asphodel Ltd. Essentially, a sixteen speaker set-up which allows the performer to direct sound in any three-dimensional direction. The software operates based upon the spacialization and diffusion of abstract sound.

The live performance from Matmos contained three distinct sequences with plenty of chaotic improvisation. “Static Piano” was a quad-video setup of a large piano driven and dragged through the desert, attached with microphones for audio feedback. “Variations From A troke And A Spank” offered unique surprises through their unforgettable use of ass-spanking. Their final piece “For Terry Riley” featured samples sourced from the Kronos Quartet rehearsing, and playing four objects; record rack, toilet bowl, hubcap anddeep fat fryer. In addition, Martin Schmidt manipulated sounds from children’s toys while Drew Daniel provided electro-synth beats and ambient breaks. The night concluded with a uproar of applause from the audience that experienced an enjoyable evening of audio-visual arrangements.

Matmos have studio albums available on Matador Records, Deluxe Records and their own vanity label, Vague Terrain. Liner notes credit Drew Daniel as producer, sampling, sequencing, turntable, digital editing and Martin Schmidt under producer, electric guitar, bass, amplified bible, vox organ, and other quirky instruments. “The Civil War” is their hallucinatory double exposure of medieval English Folk and 19th Century Americana. You’ll
find this Matmos release dramatically different from their experimental exploration of medical technology on “A Chance To Cut Is A Chance to Cure”. Their most recent work, “Rat Relocation Program”, is available on Locust Music and is based upon the timing and duration of rat screams.

DVD Review

Selected Discography

Exclusive Interview

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music interviewed Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt of Matmos on June 26, 2004 San Francisco (CA), Bloody Angle Compound Studios.

Xtreme Music: I’m here with Matmos at the Bloody Angle Compound and I’d like to start the interview by asking, how exactly would you describe your music?

Drew Daniel: I think of it as cut up music in the foreground of the editting process. You can hear it and tell that something was recorded and then shattered and ripped into shreds – the result is a kinda crazy quilt or a repaired object.

Martin Schmidt: I’ve had this conversation many times, even just recently about what kind of music I play. If I’m in a bar or something, and they say “What do you do?”, I’ll say “Oh, I make music” and they say “What kind?”, “What do you play?” actually is the first thing that people generally ask. For the tour I was like “On this one I play the herdy-gerdie, a bowl full of water, an auto-harp and a synthesiser. And on this show I play the peddle steel, three children’s toys, systhesiser and..

Drew Daniel: Someone plays your butt!..

Martin Schmidt: Oh and I play naked ass! (laughter)

Xtreme Music: (laughs).. So Matmos has some very innovative production techniques, could you tell us a little bit about how you incorporate that into your music.

Martin Schmidt: It all started on our first CD.. we were literally walking around with a portable DAT machine and recording interesting sounds.

Drew Daniel: We went into a science museum and they had an exhibit that a scientist had done, where they amplified a synapse of crayfish nerve tissue. We sampled it and made a squellshy distorted techno-ish song out of it.

Martin Schmidt: Because we thought this was interesting, naturally enough when we made our little press release for our first CD, we wrote “..and amplified crayfish nerve tissue.” People just loved that!

Xtreme Music: You’ve also done field recordings at liposuction surgery rooms..

Martin Schmidt: Since, it’s become kind of a shtick. We got a lot of attention for it and people were really enjoying this “objects make music” and it interested us – that’s why we’re doing it in the first place..

Drew Daniel: What’s cool about it is that information seems to double the sound. So the sound is both the sound itself, like a squelchy, squishy noise that has some funk and grit to it that’s cool as a sound. Then when you know it is human fat, suddenly it has this crazy baggage and all these cultural meanings. People are afraid to hear it but are also kinda excited about getting access to something that they wouldn’t normally have access to. So our music kinda does that, like it’s a shape that is hopefully cool or interesting on it’s own as a sound I hope but that’s for the listener to decide. But it is also this relationship between the sound and the information.

Xtreme Music: Who would you say are your main influences and how have they shaped your musical direction?

Drew Daniel: Matthew Herbert was a big one coz his record as Dr. Rockit were a great combination of musique concrete, and something that was very immediately graspable and poppy and funky. You-know so I would say he’s kind of an inspiration. Probably also, people like Throbbing Gristle or Coil because there’s a sort of occult or esoteric cloud of meanings around the way that they used sounds. I found that really inspiring that they didn’t need to be in a genre. They were content to just tunnel into their our vision, you-know that’s always inspiring when people can be independent of a scene.

Martin Schmidt: I’ve always gotten excited about music that is for something and not music for music sake. You-know, like “Muzak” for example, background music developed not to listen to, but as a stimulus program for workers to work more efficiently or happy or whatever. I mean, it’s not the exact same thing that we do but it is similar.

Drew Daniel: You can connect it, music which is an expression of a research program or a field trip. Music which is a document of something, and it isn’t just about the end result – it’s about the source too.

Xtreme Music: Where does Matmos find it’s inspiration musically?

Drew Daniel: I think it’s about being receptive to your immediate environment. You don’t have to go to some thirty thousand dollars-a-day padded recording studio to get inspired. You can look at the random objects in your room, and if you just tap them, squeeze them and tweak them, you’ll get a good result. Inspiration comes from every day. You shouldn’t have to strain and only record during the luna eclipse. It has to be much more everyday if it’s gonna generate something really active. For me that means, picking up everyday materials, things that are quotidian and are just around. For example, somebody had a birthday party at our house and there were a bunch of balloons lying around. We were realizing that we were laying in bed about to go to sleep, still playing with these balloons, squeeking and honking with them. We thought ok there was a piece here. It wasn’t because of the meaning of the balloon, it was just the activity and the sound itself was appealling and satisfying. Like meanings seem to come along for free, they’re already encoded into objects. You just have to trust that the objects will do a lot of the work for you.

Martin Schmidt: It sounded more like a question like you wanted to hear a list of like the names of other musicians (laughs). Is that actually more what you meant?

Xtreme Music: I meant influences and inspiration in general. They can be from life experiences or from the other music you’ve been listening to recently.

Drew Daniel: Someone like Kurt Swaydurst maybe.

Martin Schmidt: Sure.. it’s curious because we pop back and forth because we’ve been doing well. People are interested in hearing our music. But we are in a very odd space.. it’s really stretching to call it pop music, even just talking about it. I’m up against the very problems that we have, and then it’s not really super high-brow art music. But it’s not really dance music.. I mean it’s crap for dancing.. and we feel a little bit obsurd in art galleries because it’s not composed twentith music..

Drew Daniel: We don’t have any training of any kind, so it’s sort of conceptual yet vulgar.

Martin Schmidt: What has that got to do with your question, I have no idea..(laughs)

Drew Daniel: Inspiration I guess to me, there’s a feeling of panic that is indemnic to the singer-songwriter tradition because your music is a diary and is an expression of your inner emotions. So you’re kinda like this wet towel that you wring tighter and tighter with each album that finds some more pathos. Luckily our music is not about our personalities or emotions, it’s really about external objects that we stumble onto and what they offer us. So it’s about the human skull, or it’s about the fat or about a latex t-shirt. It’s not really about my mood when I got out of bed this morning. I think it’s not very ego driven in that sense. So maybe I don’t worry about inspiration, I just hope that I keep running into cool objects..

Martin Schmidt: I think there’s very little risk that’ll stop happening..(chuckles)

Drew Daniel: Yeah, the world is full of amazing junk.

Xtreme Music: Matmos is having a two night live performance session right here at the Bloody Angle Compound, courtesy of Asphodel Recordings. Could you tell us about how the live performance went last night and what the crowd reaction has been like?

Martin Schmidt: Well, one of the pieces for this show involves spanking a naked butt. It’s funny because the gentleman whom I talked into being the model for this shoot.. the butt in question.. I was talking to him on the street the other day.. he’s not someone I know very well. He was asking whether he should come or not.. to the show that is. He asked me “What do I think people’s reaction will be?”, and I said “I think there will be some laughing!”. He just got this shocked look on his face and said “Laughing?”, Well yeah, butts are funny (laughs). You put a big picture of a butt on the screen and people are going to go “Hehehe”.. but I hope it turns into something a little more, like once it’s turning that mean color red, after you’ve spanked it a long time, it’s sort of an uncomfortable funny if it’s still funny. And so it was just nice to hear people laugh at something..

Drew Daniel: There was some complaints that when I was spanking Martin along to the video, that it wasn’t loud enough, so that’s one thing we’re hoping on fixing tonight. Louder butt smacking is one of my main goals for this evening. I mean it’s tricky, we have a structure and I felt kind of awkward playing much more vulgar pop orientated music after you-know two-hours of incredibly dense, gourgeous, cinematic, glassy sounds from Francis Dhomont. It’s so lovely and precise what he’s doing. So when we go up there, I feel like we’re kinda degrading the tone a little bit. But I think people are reliefed and it’s cool that in San Francisco you can have an evening that runs the gamet from really classic musique concrete approaches to somebody like Richard Chartier incredibly precise ear for contemporary sound design. Then we’re the kind of like..

Martin Schmidt: Bastard child..

Drew Daniel: Yeah, we’re the sugary dessert at the end! (laughs)

Xtreme Music: Fantastic! So we can look forward to a highly enjoyable show this evening!

Martin Schmidt: Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder(laughs)

Xtreme Music: Could you tell us about your recent work on your latest album?

Drew Daniel: The last record we did is actually this EP that’s a recording of a rat that broke into our house. It was eating our food and bitting holes in our clothes, so we trapped it in one of those safe “Have-A-Heart Traps” and recorded it screaming. Not that it was in pain, it was just angry. Then on the next day we took it to a rich neighbourhood in the suburbs and set it free. It was sort of a cultural exchange program.. (laughs)..

Martin Schmidt: I’m not sure what culture that got out of a rat..

Drew Daniel: I mean animals are interesting because of their timing. Like if you’ve ever watched an animal move across a room, it’s decisions about when it stops and freezes, and when it moves again.. well, it’s inhuman. It’s not like human logic, so I thought it would be interesting to try to base a musical piece around that. So I used everytime the rat screams in this fifteen-minute long space of time as my marker for when to have changes in the composition. The changes are determined not by my goals or desires, but by the rat’s decision about when it had enough.. when it needed to scream..

Xtreme Music: And what would you say has been the best experience in Matmos’ music career?

Drew Daniel: God, thirteen years is a long time! I dunno..

Xtreme Music: Are there any particular highlights that you’d like to mention? Are there any particular bands, or people that you’ve worked with that have been extremely fulfilling?

Drew Daniel: Some really good times on every tour. I remember being on tour with The Rachels and we pull into this scary piano bar and Rachel Grimes, the pianist for The Rachels, takes over the piano and we just sat there while she played show tunes and collected tips and then go eat dinner.

Martin Schmidt: Well the guy that plays the piano was late! So the piano was empty, and there was her.. the guy who regularly played piano.. there were his regulars who were sort of waiting for him to show up. She was like, “Well, I can play a little..” and she was this amazing pianist.. that was fun!

Drew Daniel: On the Bjork tour I remember walking around all day on Halloween, dressed as Napoleon in Paris.. and that was fun. I dunno, I mean musical high points kinda sound like your patting yourself on the back..
Martin Schmidt: None of the things I remember honestly have anything to do with music particularly..

Drew Daniel: There were recordings where we knew there was something really exciting there. I remember getting David Parhose guitar parts for The West and when I listened to them I knew like this was going to be such a fun record to make, I was so excited! It was the same when I got the liposuction recording. The sounds of the extra large cannula getting shoved in and out of the wound, just made the most incredible sounds and I was really excited! I mean you know when you get a recording that’s really got presence and that’s wonderful when that happens.

Xtreme Music: Matmos have collaborated with some of my favourite musicians, as you mentioned, Bjork, you’ve also worked with The Melvins and Otomo Yoshihide. What was it like working with those people?

Drew Daniel: Well we’ve remixed them..

Martin Schmidt: (laughs)..
We’ve never met The Melvins or Otomo..

Drew Daniel: No we met The Melvins..

Martin Schmidt: We met King Buzzo literally as we were walking. We were like, “Hey, isn’t that the guy?” and we went over to him and were like “Oh, we’re Matmos. We are doing a remix of your..” and he was like “I don’t have anything to do with that!”.. (laughs).. then we had a nice conversation, he’s a good fella. But he was literally like “I don’t know anything about that, other people do that”..

Drew Daniel: The people that we’ve actually collaborated with, would be Bjork, The Rachel and David Grubbs and Jay Lesser. Those are people that we’ve really worked on records with where there has been a strong connection as musicians, and it’s always different.. everytime you attempt that, it’s like your starting again from zero. That’s what is so useful about it, you learn to wonder why you need the things you think you need when you work with someone who doesn’t need them. So it’s really healthy.

Xtreme Music: And for my final question I’d like to ask, what can you see happening for Matmos in the near future?

Drew Daniel: Martin’s fortieth birthday party.. (laughs)

Martin Schmidt: Which isn’t a musical event particularly..

Xtreme Music: Are there any particular gigs or collaborations, remix work that you’ll be doing?

Martin Schmidt: We are going to do some remixes of the songs from the new Bjork record I guess..

Drew Daniel: And I got asked to do a remix of Roots Manuver and then in August we’re performing at a psychoanalysis and critical theory conference at UC Irving where this French philosopher Allen Badure and Slavor J. Jacque, who is one of the most important lucimian psychoanalytic critics. They’re speaking on the politics of psychoanalysis topic. It’s a two-week seminar and then Matmos is gonna perform with Ultra Red at the conference. So it’s our attempt to enter the scary world of academic high culture.

Martin Schmidt: As well as being entertaining.. (laughs)

Drew Daniel: We’ll be like the cover band on the luxury cruise liner!

Xtreme Music: Well I’m really looking forward to seeing the live performance tonight, I think it’s gonna be phenomenal! It was great meeting you both!