For the last two years, Matmos have been distracted
from their own work as they worked with Björk
on Vespertine,
and toured as part of her backing band. Forced to confront
their approach to sound and adapt to the rigorous nature
of pop music, Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt have learnt
to structure their music in an entirely different way
to what they had been used to until then, the legacy
of this collaboration with the Icelandic songstress
being most apparent in the pair’s latest release,
The Civil War.
San Francisco-based Matmos first emerged in 1997 with
their self-titled debut album, originally released on
their own record label, Vague Terrain, before being
snapped up by independent label Matador Records. Combining
elements of electric guitars and human voices with amplified
non-musical noises into densely cut up sound organisations,
this album presented a perverse take on musical forms.
The band persevered with their second album, Quasi-Objects,
a year later, progressively positioning themselves amongst
the more creative musicians around. In 2001, Daniel
and Schmidt released their strangest record to date.
For A Chance To Cut Is
A Chance To Cure, the pair solely used sounds
from cosmetic surgery instruments, skin or sourced from
operating theatres, creating a truly abstract and disturbingly
beautiful piece of work.
The Civil War is a very different affair from
its predecessor. Based both on the English and American
Civil Wars, this album sees Matmos investigating a far
more obvious musical scope than previously. Perhaps
for the first time in their career, Daniel and Schmidt
are heavily relying on proper musical instruments. Yet,
as they recently confessed to The Wire, the starting
point of this album is still very much at object level,
the pair spending as much time sampling the clicking
of the key of the hurdy-gurdy heard on the opening two
tracks as they did trying to get the actual sound of
the instrument. This results in The Civil War
sounding something of a weird and wonderful mixture
of medieval music, alternative country and futuristic
glitch electronica. If the early part of Regicide,
which opens this album, sounds totally anachronic, especially
for Matmos, the compositions evolves into a chaotic
abrasive collection of noises, destabilising the fragile
melody before returning to a more musical structure.
Zealous Order Of Candied Knights, which follows,
appears more straightforward, with a typically medieval-esque
melody swirling over drums. The epic Reconstruction
starts with marching drums, but the pair soon inflict
a storm of modulations, noise and cut up conversation
on the listener. The track then evolves into something
more melodic, and with the help of guitarists Mark Lightcap
and Jim Putman and pianist David Grubbs, progressively
give it a laidback alt country feel, later echoed in
Yield To Total Elation, For The Trees
and the cinematic The Stuggle Against Unreality
Begins. On the tongue-in-cheek The Stars &
Stripes Forever, Matmos give their own version
of a typical 4th of July celebration condensed in just
two minutes. The moment most typical of Matmos on this
album is to be found on Pelt & Holler,
on which the pair return to their object-driven electro-acoustic
for a moment, creating the most abstract and introvert
piece of this album.
The prospect of having Matmos using traditional instruments
might appear as strange as their own take on music,
but this album actually works overall rather well. As
the pair adapts to the foreign concept (for them at
least) of traditional instrumentation, they still corrupt
it with their oblique vision to produce once again a
record that challenges all interpretations of music.
3.9/5 |
