The 2 males of Matmos reside rebukes to the concept that conceptual artwork is in some way scary and inaccessible. Once they determine to make a observe out of the sounds of a breast implant or a cow uterus, they’re difficult themselves not simply to make use of these noises, however to make them sound funky and enjoyable. In a latest interview with Norwegian artist Lasse Marhaug, M.C. Schmidt—one half of the duo alongside his musical and romantic companion Drew Daniel—described being one in all 10 individuals at an electroacoustic pageant a number of years in the past; the issue, he believed, was that the venue had solely invited “educational composers” to the pageant, relatively than placing up flyers and getting the phrase out to the general public. “I really feel like multi-channel electroacoustic music can and must be a populist/fashionable artwork type,” stated Schmidt. “Simply, for instance, loved by anybody who smokes marijuana.”
Their new album Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer integrates electroacoustic music and populist artwork in a really literal approach. Whereas many of the file is stylistically according to the duo’s M.O. of mapping sounds from unconventional sources onto a rhythmic grid taken from digital pop, all of the sounds listed here are sourced from a pattern pack the duo created from the electroacoustic works Polish composer Bogusław Schaeffer made on the influential Polish Radio Experimental Studio within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. The couple didn’t know Schaeffer’s music earlier than Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz Institute commissioned the pattern pack, and it’s onerous responsible them: Although fashionable in Poland, particularly within the Nineteen Nineties, Schaeffer is little recognized overseas. Recordings and performances of his items aren’t at all times simple to return by, however anybody who noticed the superior latest touring print of David Lynch’s Inland Empire can have heard his work.
The 11 items included into the pattern pack supplied nearly every thing the duo may need for the album’s eight tracks. Choral samples tackle the position that pretend angel-choir presets typically play in digital music, casting eerie chords to create a way of grandeur and foreboding. It appears unbelievable {that a} ridiculously funky little bit of frat-rock organ on “Cobra Wages Shuffle / Off! Schable w gurę!” might’ve come from Schaeffer, however nope, it’s from Schaeffer’s “E.S. Jazz.” (The titles are bilingual, and three are pleasant anagrams for Schaeffer’s identify.) A forest of bells criss-crosses the panorama of opener “Resemblage / Parasamblaż”—not the fairy-tale type however gruff clanks that emphasize the actual fact of bells as percussion devices. Then there are the honks. Matmos adores honks, and Schaeffer gives them with no scarcity thereof.
