Matmos

Together M .C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are Matmos, an experimental group from San Francisco. Since 1998 they have produced eight albums, offering a playful but knowing synthesis between concrete music and electronica. They draw their sounds from the most varied and unlikely sources, such as the noise of someone leafing through the Bible, liposuction operations, human hair, Polish trains, rats in cages, balloons, SM clothes in latex and insects. Combined with more “conventional” instruments (ukulele, a five-dollar guitar or violin), these sounds are sampled and rearranged in rhythmic pieces that may be calm and minimal or have a furious, edgy swing. Their latest album, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, is a series of musical portraits of historical figures (Ludwig Wittgenstein or Ludwig II of Bavaria, for example) made out of sounds from objects linked to personal histories. In addition to their work with other musicians (including a collaboration with Bjork, which made them known to a wider public), Matmos have composed sound tracks for several gay porn films. The duo have shown their work at the Whitney Museum of American Art and done a seventeen-day live performance at the Yerba Buena Museum of Contemporary Art in San Francisco. For their concert at the Printemps de septembre, Matmos will be accompanied by three musicians, including harpist Zeena Parkins.