(Drew with Terry Riley)
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The seventh Matmos album is called "Supreme Balloon" and it is now available in many forms: a compact disc with 7 songs is the form that M. C. Schmidt feels best represents the real core of the album, while Drew Daniel prefers the longer 11 song double LP vinyl format with the fancy gatefold artwork, and many eco-conscious listeners will probably treasure the entirely digital file-format version. These decisions are up to you; choose wisely, and remember that more is not necessarily better. Every time that we complete an album we try to provide an online text describing each song and giving some background information about its backstory. This album is harder to talk about than most. Consulting the I-Ching while working on this album produced the sixteenth hexagram, "Delight". This feels appropriate, because this album is sincerely intended to give delight to the listener. While creating it, many more songs were fashioned than were used on the final tracklisting of the album, and the more discordant, harsh, clanging and abrasive songs were weeded out in favor of songs that shared a family resemblance and a positive direction. The core of the sixteenth hexagram is its fourth yang line; in the translated annotations to this figure provided by Thomas Cleary we read of the fourth yang that: "Being the source of delight, there is great gain. Let there be no doubt, and companions will gather." This too is true of our album. Many friends from far and wide participated in the recording sessions for this album, making it a social and collaborative affair. We are thankful to the people who gave us sounds that we did use and we are just as grateful to the people who gave us sounds that we did not use for this record. Someday these sounds will find their home too. As we prepare to tour Europe and the UK and America playing the music from this album we hope that you will also gather together with us and Lesser and Wobbly and Leprechaun Catering and be our companions.
In the coming days we will present a guide to the record with photos and stories about its creation. Thank you for listening.
(Drew with Terry Riley)
In support of the soon to be released new album "Supreme Balloon", Matmos is taking it on the road for some shows in Europe and North America. (Note that there have been a few changes to the itinerary for the North American leg of the tour that was originally announced a couple of weeks ago.) Here are the details:
Fri Jun 06 - Bristol, UK @ Venn Festival
Sun Jun 08 - London, UK @ Beaconsfield Gallery
Mon Jun 09 - London, UK @ Beaconsfield Gallery
Thu Jun 12 - Dublin, IE @ Future Days Festival
Sun Jun 15 - Amsterdam, NL @ Holland Festival
Tue Jun 17 - Berlin, DE @ Festsaal Kreuzberg
Wed Jun 18 - Prague, CZ @ Divadla Archa
Thu Jun 19 - Vienna, AT @ Szene Wien
Fri Jun 20 - Ljubljana, SI @ Teatro
Sat Jun 21 - Barcelona, ES @ Sonar Festival
Mon Jul 07 - Seattle, WA @ Triple Door *
Wed Jul 09 - Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater *
Sat Jul 12 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall *
Sun Jul 13 - Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex #
Tue Jul 15 - Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theatre $
Fri Jul 18 - New York, NY @ (le) poisson rouge %
Sat Jul 19 - New York, NY @ (le) poisson rouge %
Mon Jul 21 - Toronto, ONT @ The Music Gallery %
Wed Jul 23 - Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center %
Thu Jul 24 - Detroit, MI @ Detroit Institute of Arts %
Fri Jul 25 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Andy Warhol Museum %
Sun Jul 27 - Chicago, IL @ Lakeshore Theater %
* - support from Wobbly
# - support from Wobbly and Dublab DJs
$ - support from Jason Corder aka Offthesky
% - support from Leprechaun Catering
Matmos will also be playing live radio sets in some cities on the tour. We'll try and post more info about that if/when it becomes available.
The brand new matmos music video for "Exciter Lamp" has been making some rounds via YouTube, however Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt encourage people to watch much cleaner, higher fidelity version. So it's now available through the Brainwashed Video Podcast. You can watch or subscribe using this link:
It is "is sort of an homage to Norman McLaren, the Canadian animation/direct sound magus."
Matmos will be playing the 2008 Brainwaves Festival in the Boston area thrown together by Brainwashed. The fest is from November 21-23 and more information can be found out at brainwavesfest.org.
As you can see, after many years of basic black, we've given the site a swank new look to go with the upcoming new album, "Supreme Balloon". We're still fixing up a few things here and there, so please excuse any broken links or missing content while we get things finished.
The Gum Drop, aka the weekly newsletter and exclusive MP3 download section of music blog Stereogum, is offering a new and unreleased Matmos MP3 this week. Titled "Unbeliever", this track will not appear on "Supreme Balloon", so go and grab it now, and then when the album comes out, you can put it on your iPod and tell all your unhip friends that it's a bonus track from the rare Swiss edition of the album or something.
You can also find two tracks from "Supreme Balloon" in MP3 format if you know where to look. And in case you don't know where to look, we'll tell you that "Rainbow Flag" is available on Matador's Matmos page, and "Polychords" is one of the tracks on the new Matador MP3 sampler "Intended Play: Spring 2008".
On Thursday, April 17th, Drew will be giving a talk at Red Emma's (800 St. Paul St., Baltimore) about his take on Throbbing Gristle's most "accessible" album, "20 Jazz Funk Greats", recently published in book form in Continuum's increasingly essential 33 1/3 series. The talk starts at 7:30 PM, but Drew will be DJing a Throbbing Gristly happy hour starting at 6:00 PM around the corner at Liam's Pint Size Pub (911 N. Charles St.) to help lubricate the proceedings. And in case you need another reason to come, Red Emma's be running a 10% sale on all 33 1/3 titles that evening!
We are pleased to announce that on May 6th 2008 Matador Records will release the new Matmos album "Supreme Balloon" as a compact disc, two vinyl long playing records, and as a gallimaufry of digital files through iTunes and other online retailers of note.
The album is a pretty wild departure from classical Matmos working methods: no kooky or abject objects were played percussively, no conceptual rubrics or philosophical syllabi are appended, and, hell, no microphones were used at any point in the creation of the record. Instead, "Supreme Balloon" is an ALL SYNTHESIZER ALBUM. Old synths, new synths, MAX patches, one-of-a-kind modular rigs, decrepit consumer electronics of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, boutique effects pedals, tabla drum machines from India: it's all there.
Drew and Safety Scissors work hard on the Electro Comp 100.
Supreme Balloon, indeed.
A number of close Matmos pals and some musical idols of ours came along for the ride this time: many of the songs are built of cut-up and manipulated synth solos played by Jay Lesser, Matthew "Safety Scissors" Curry, and Jon Leidecker (aka "Wobbly"). The album also features a guest appearance by Bay Area classical pianist Sarah Cahill, who tickles the plastic on our "cover" of French baroque composer Francois Couperin's "Les Folies Francaises" and a face-melting solo on the E.V.I. (Electronic Voice Instrument) from a living treasure of American jazz, Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
M.C. also working hard.
With the Coupigny Synth at the INA/GRM at RadioFrance.
For those of you completists who seek out bonus tracks, we would also like to point out that the vinyl and digital editions of the album include a bonus track featuring an ARP 2600 solo played by none other than Terry Riley. The album has some really sweet original artwork by Robert Syrett which was made in collaboration with the number-crunching wizards at The Echo Nest, and the whole package is lovingly layed out by Rex Ray.
You can now hear the album's first song "Rainbow Flag" on Matador's Matmos microsite. We will have lots more to say about the album once it is released, and we're currently planning European and American tours in which only traditional synthetic cuisine of the highest quality will be served.
FEBRUARY 9
BENEFIT FOR THE TRANSMODERN AGE FESTIVAL
MATMOS
(Plus Performance Works by: Stephanie Barber, Adam Robinson, Ric Royer, Laure Drogoul, Theresa Columbus, Rebecca Nagle)
FLORISTREE (H&H Building)
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
TEN DOLLARS
NINE PM
ALL AGES
Claustrophobics take note: Those who couldn't squeeze into our way-packed Red Room show will have another chance to see Matmos live in Charm City and to contribute to a worthy cause. We will be performing a benefit concert to raise funds for the Transmodern Age Festival, a Baltimore institution that showcases experimental new performance work and hits the decks this year in April with "Mayhem, Ecstasy, and Radical Culture". Sounds good! This evening will feature a musical set by Matmos and a series of short works of performance art from Stephanie Barber, Adam Robinson, Ric Royer, Laure Drogoul, Theresa Columbus, Rebecca Nagle "and more". That's right, performance art. Deal with it.
FEBRUARY 21, 22, 23
THE STONE
AVENUE C at 2nd STREET
NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.
TEN DOLLARS
ALL AGES
A seriously righteous cluster of events will take place in Manhattan over this weekend at The Stone, courtesy of the curatorial intervention of Zeena Parkins and the overarching hospitality of Stone director John Zorn. It's an overlapping series of shows that brings together East and West Coast friends and co-conspirators from the incestuously extended Matmos family and beyond. We want you to come to all of these if you possibly can (get in). As ever with the Stone, no advance tickets so it's first come, first served. These will be intimate concerts and you should expect people to be trying stuff they wouldn't normally attempt to pull off. Here's the full run down:
2/21 Thursday
10 pm
Bevin Blectum Solo - Gular Flutter
Bevin Blectum (laptop, assorted electronics)
Costumed and with video, all new audio/video from the new album Gular Flutter. Audio by Blevin Blectum. Video by Ryan Junell. The live performance is a study in slo-mo sunspots, high contrast hydraulics, Cascaded Integrator-Combing, and negative acceleration. Epic sound for distressed ifrit. Peculiar winds during the eclipse allow for the rapid cooling of the organism via evaporative water loss and convection from the mucous- covered surfaces. The metal-helmeted cascade-familiar performs maintenance. Shot hot in the hills of Oakland, Ca.
2/22 Friday
8 pm
Phase Chancellor
Martin Schmidt (synth) Jay Lesser (synth) Nate Boyce (synth)
An improvisational 3 synthesizer trio: Ecumenically straddling the modular and digital divide and avoiding any straight answer to the question "to drone or not to drone?". Phase Chancellor skip the presets in favor of intuitive long form progression through a smoky vortex of signal chains.
10 pm
Wobbly and Jay Lesser - solos and a possible duo
Wobbly (dual CDJ, samplers keyboards) Jay Lesser (electronics, laptop, synth)
2/23 Saturday (RK)
8 and 10 pm
MATMOS
Dr. Drew Daniel (laptop, objects) Martin Schmidt (synth, objects)
Matmos are a duo that recently relocated from San Francisco to Baltimore. Their work is all over the place: musique concrete, pop music, rhythmic patterns, free improv, video, sound, actions. For this concert they will present their "cover" of "The Backyard", the final act of the Robert Ashley tele-opera "Perfect Lives" and some newer pieces that focus on pure electronic music. Expect some improvisation and some guest shenanigans.
It's simply too late to turn back now: Drew Daniel is a published author. His first book is brought to you by Continuum Books as the latest installment in their 33 1/3 series of book-length critical studies of "classic albums." Improbably enough, Drew's contribution concerns Throbbing Gristle's immortal fan-puzzler "20 Jazz Funk Greats". The book jerks back and forth between interviews with all four members of the band and Drew's own interpretive heavy breathings, and includes a never-before-published photograph of the album's mastertape taken by Chris Carter and an illustration from the notebooks of Genesis P. Orridge.
As with christening a ship, the reproduction of a commodity is never complete without the apology for the first gaffe, flub, or typo discovered therein, and Drew's book is no exception to this rule. Sensitive readers will no doubt curl their lips with disdain when they turn to page 134 and see the following quote introducing Drew's analysis of the song "Walkabout":
"Arise and walk about in the land, in the length of it and in the breadth, for I will give it unto thee." Genesis 13:17 (Tndale Translation).
Who, you may well ask is Tndale? Dear reader, the intended reference is to William Tyndale, the Bible translator martyred for his efforts in 1536. Nobody's perfect. Seriously, all typos aside, Drew is awfully happy to bring this text to print and eager to chat about it so if you want to, um, interview him about his text please email him at: dr dot drew dot daniel at gmail dot com. As of today you can buy the book in a real honest-to-god bookstore or you could snag it online too.
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