“Few, Far Chaos Bugles” manipulates a faint chorus, a heavily processed horn line, a clave rhythm, and diced chunks of sound all but un-moored from their original purpose. There’s a blurring of lines here as Matmos and Schaeffer become a single entity. Halfway in, the rhythm is gone, as disembodied voices, creepy violin segments, and what sounds like the ultimate soundtrack to being lost in a cave takes precedent. Early on, the music is driven by pulse, yet odd vocal harmonies, dire orchestrated chords, and unsettling whirs and glitches abound. “Tonight There’s Something Special about the Moon” demonstrates that connection. Because Schaeffer was an electronic music pioneer sometimes prone to odd sonic squiggles and jarring pulses, one hears a natural connection between him and Matmos. Working from a sample pack of Schaeffer’s music accessed from the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES), they’ve not only chopped up and processed sections of the composer’s work for tracks that radically re-purpose the music, they’ve also allowed for a bit of breathing room in the album’s more meditative second half. Since Daniel and Schmidt both have a mischievous pop sensibility connected to academic pursuits (Daniel is an Associate Professor of English at Johns Hopkins), they’re in an authoritative position to inject a bit of play into the often dryly academic world of electro-acoustic music. That Matmos has decided to re-imagine the work of recently late Polish composer Bogusław Schaeffer, a wunderkind who rode a thin margin between classical and avant-garde composition, makes sense. Few groups can pull this off, but they make a strong case for keeping popularity at arm’s length. Instead, their position just outside of a definable genre has allowed their music to remain fresh, curious, adventurous, and fun. Their imaginations, sense of humor, and ability to hear the grandiose in trash and machinery have also allowed them a quarter-century career that arguably has never peaked.
Writing about them is nearly as entertaining as listening to their records, all of which are rewarding, some of which could rock a club. They’ve made entire albums from a Whirlpool Ultimate Care 2 washing machine and enlisted collaborators to record an album using only assorted discarded plastic. Instead, they’ve made dance floor grooves from liposuction samples and collaborated with 99 musicians for music that defies boundaries but is purposely limited to a 99 BPM pace. One suspects Daniel and Schmidt don’t care. For some 25 years, their music has run parallel to Warp Records’ innovations and accolades, yet they’ve never quite received the praises of Autechre or Aphex Twin. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, the Baltimore-based duo that comprises Matmos, are electronic music pranksters as well as deft editors.
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