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MATMOS
By
Dr. Strangelove
Recently while on
honey moon in San Francisco me and the Mrs. got a chance to check out
a special live performance/art installation of Matmos called Work,
Work, Work. They setup there studio/living room at the Yuerba Buena
Center and then invited everybody in for a listen. Then in addition to
just listening they might ask you to help make a song or they would
have a different guests who they would jam with them every night. The
Matmos duo (M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel) aren't your traditional
electronic hipsters. These guys like to use abstract sounds from
mundane objects such as cameras, cards and 5.00 guitars to the insane
like liposuction or electrical interference generated by laser eye
surgery and combined them with cool synths and beats in such a way
that it just all fits together. I guess that's why Bjork tapped the
duo to work and tour for Vespertine. Needless to say if you ever get a
chance to see these guys live they rock or you can bring "The Civil
War" into your home out now on Matador records. We got a chance to ask
Drew a few questions so lets hear what he had to say about Matmos.
Dr.Strangelove: How
did Matmos begin?
Drew: We met in 1989
or 1990. I was a go go dancer at a gay bar called Club Uranus, and I
had a sampler and was already doing solo noise/cut-up stuff. Martin
was in an industrial band called IAOCore that I had seen live at a
punk rock club called Gilman Street. We became boyfriends and
bandmates more or less simultaneously and that was eleven years ago,
or is it twelve? We're hazy about the date, but our anniversary is
Halloween so that's easy to remember. When we started out we made
noisy 8 bit mono musique concrete stuff, and very blatant attempts at
rave music, both of which were superfun to make but they didn't quite
work. Undaunted, we kept going and going and gradually the two halves
came together (musique concrete sound sources w techno based
sequencing) and something started to take shape that felt organic.
Dr.Strangelove: I was
lucky enough to hear you guys perform the opening night for your Work,
Work, Work show at the Yuerba Bueana Ceneter. I also heard you create
the musical psychoanalysis of one of your first gallery visitors, how
did the rest of show go?
Drew: It was
incredibly draining and demanding, obviously in terms of our time, to
commit to 97 hours of presence in the gallery, and to start everyday
by having to make a song and to end each day with a three hour
improvisatory performance, but it was really rewarding and fun, and it
took on a cool, cumulative power as the seventeen days wore on.
Dr.Strangelove: Are
you guys living out some sort of civil war fetish on your latest
album? Yankees or Rebels?
Drew: Well I grew up
in Kentucky which was a neutral state during the early stages of the
Civil War, so I'm not sure where that puts me. Politically I would
have to side with the cause of the North, but having grown up in a
place that culturally regarded itself as Southern I am torn on this
one as I think I have a Southerner's suspicion of the East and West
coast culture bunker mentality. My family is largely from Alabama and
I am named after an ancestor who fought for the South; to my shame my
family owned slaves and so it's the source of a really uneasy, tense
awareness of a personal link to our country's great founding crime of
slavery. That said, none of that was really on our minds when we made
the music on "The Civil War"- the title emerged very late in the
process. We knew were working with both English and American folk
music traditions and wanted something that could float ambiguously
across the Atlantic.
Dr.Strangelove: So
who are some of the people and groups that have influenced you and
that are a must listen?
Drew:
Can "Tago Mago"
Nurse With Wound
"Sylvie and Babs Thigh High Hi Fi Companion"
Throbbing Gristle "20
Jazz Funk Greats"
Pierre Henry
"Variations for A Door and Sigh"
Steinski and Mass
Media "We'll Be Right Back" / "The Motorcade Sped On"
Einsturzende
Neubauten "Kollaps"
Mauricio Kagel "Tactil"
Meat Beat Manifesto
"Storm the Studio"
Perrey and Kingsley
"The In Sound From Way Out"
Dick Hyman "Moog"
David Byrne and Brian
Eno "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts"
Moebius & Plank "Rastakrautpasta"
Laurie Anderson "Big
Science"
Kaotic Chemistry "Drumtrip"
Acen "Trip II The
Moon"
Merzbow "Batztoutai
with Memorial Gadgets"
Dr.Strangelove: Can
you talk a little about the visual aspect of your performances?
Drew: Martin makes
the videos that accompany our shows, and when we're deciding which
songs to play we try to focus on pieces that aren't strictly
electronic to avoid that static feeling of staring at people as they
stare at screens. Electronic shows can be dull as ditchwater if you
aren't careful.
Dr.Strangelove: With
all the attention you two have had lately what has changed?
Drew: When we started
out we were making the music only to please ourselves and we didn't
really think about its outcome or who would hear it. We try now to
insulate ourselves from that while we're working because we don't
want to pander to people's expectations or harden into a cliché, but
that gets harder as you continue with something. Having made five
albums, there's a sense that each time you need to keep pushing
yourself, and that gets increasingly difficult the longer you've done
something, you get more attached to certain strategies, certain
sounds.
Dr.Strangelove: If
you guys had your own Matmos line of action figures what would they be
like?
Drew: It's funny you
mention that because we're talking to Hasbro right now. No, we're not,
but there are two bubble bath bottles shaped like action figures which
we keep in our bathroom because they kind of resemble each of us-
Martin looks a bit like the Robocop one and I look a bit like the
Noddy one. So there's a balance there, a robot side to things
(computers) and an elf side to things (hurdy gurdy).
Dr.Strangelove: You
had mentioned you do a little bit of djing from time to time, what's
that sound like?
Drew: A mess,
sometimes a good mess, sometimes it just sounds inept. We're not
technical Djs at all, we just play music that we're in the mood for
personally, it's a bit selfish maybe. At the last event we DJed at, a
Gold Chains and Zeek Sheck show that was a benefit for Matt Gonzalez'
Green Party bid to be San Francisco's mayor, we played: Alice
Coltrane, Bow Gamelan Ensemble, Isaac Hayes, Kas Product, Glass Candy
and the Shattered Theater, Errorsmith, Housing Project, Amanda Lear,
DJ Honet, sumatran and javanese pop music, The Human League, The Cars,
Starter, the disco theme to Battlestar Galactica, a cover of David
Allen Coe's "Convoy" done in a Kraftwerk style and some PIL.
Dr.Strangelove: How
do you guys make peanut butter and jelly?
Drew: I have been on
the Atkins Diet for the past three months so my sandwich would consist
of peanut butter with no bread (carbs) and no jelly (sugar is also a
no no). So I'd have this kind of fucked up minimalist remix of the
traditional PB n J.
Dr.Strangelove: And
last but not least, If a moose, a rabbit and santa clause go into
bagel shop what comes out?
Drew: a horribly
furry onion bagel with salmon and pelts and claws and stuff?
For more information
on Matmos check out
http://www.brainwashed.com/matmos/
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