Last Sigh: So...who the hell is Matmos
anyway?
Drew: Matmos is Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. When we play live we incorporate a third
member, Jay Lesser. The records, especially lately, involve all manner of
collaborationists and sound-source providers, but Martin and I call the shots when it
comes to assembling the songs.
Last Sigh: Closer to an IDM thang but then again, faaar from it.
Descrive the Matmos sound.
Drew: That label fits some of our songs, and doesn’t fit others. We want to make
music which is untrustworthy. I’ve made some deeply unintelligent songs lately, so we
may finally shake that off . . .
Last Sigh: So what’ve y’all been up to as of late?
Matmos: Very hectic lately. We have been working on too many remixes for friends and
nice people (Labradford, Richie Devine, Sutekh, Slicker, Lucky Kitchen, and now it looks
like a remix of Muziq is in the works), some really unexpected and fun collaborations
(swapping sounds and beats with Bjork, finished working on a full length collaborative
record with the Rachel’s, making a song with this guitarist from Kentucky called
Keenan Lawler, and now we’re talking about collaborating with a guy named Scott
Herren in Atlanta), and falling behind on compilation tracks. All these distinct projects
are fun, but it’s true that this distracts us from working on the new full length
album for Matador. Good thing they’re patient. There is now a fairly dry and factual
website kindly hosted by brainwashed.com (
) with some good pictures of Drew in the Operating Theatre recording
liposuction and some good found texts and the usual rap sheet.
Last Sigh: Describe for us if you will, the live Matmos experience.
Matmos: Martin tends to play the instruments in the band- guitar, banjo, weird objects
like tanks of helium, duck calls and acupuncture point detectors. Jay Lesser drinks beer,
looks bored and plays a CDJ through a KaossPad- we burn Cds of the trickier/unplayable
instrumental parts (certain guitar lines, virtual Dave Pajo, virtual Mark Lightcap,
liposcution and tea kettle recordings etc.) and Jay DJs with them in a live, improvisatory
manner. I sample Jay and sample Martin live, and incorporate them into the sequenced,
rhythmic "songs". We swerve between playing songs and just freely improvising.
Martin’s the big fan of improv and I’m the "structure" guy. I guess.
There’s often a visual component, either in gestures that we make or in the videos
that Martin makes which are projected on/above us.
Last Sigh: What’s the studio experience like for you guys?
Matmos: Our studio is right next to the bedroom and the kitchen, so it’s pretty
much inescapable. It makes me far too prolific, plenty of daily ear garbage for poor
Martin to wade through (grad school keeps me home too much).
Last Sigh: Was ‘The West’ a concept album?
Matmos: Not in a heavy handed way, the songs just seemed to coalesce together out of
recordings that we did with our friends in Los Angeles and the sounds that Dave Pajo sent
us to work with. I think our road trip down the 5 freeway on our way to Los Angeles was
kind of an inspiration - music for the central valley of California. Our records become
concept albums after the fact- in the act of picking the songs and planning the art
something takes shape, some songs get dropped, etc.
Last Sigh: What’s this about connections to lesser and Kid606?
Matmos: Don’t get us started. We’re all in this claptrap noise band called
Disc. It was Jay Lesser’s idea, the Kid pursued the dream with manic intensity, we
were dragged along for the ride like cans on a newlywed’s car. . . and four CDs later
(all on Vinyl Communications, so you probably won’t have heard them) nobody knows
whose baby it is. We have remixed the Kid, and toured with Lesser, they are good
friends/sparring partners/tar-babies. The Kid and Jay are about to tour together again in
Europe, and we’re going to meet up and play with Jay in Paris at a swanky improv
festival at the Pompidou Center. It all goes round and round . . . they keep us current
gear-wise, poke breathing holes in our pretensions, and can gossip up a storm!
There’s a brand new Disc 12" coming out on Deluxe next month, featuring 100
locked grooves and some killer raw CD-skipping. No music necessary.
Last Sigh: Mark Spybey?
Matmos: We asked him to play with us in Vancouver- he wound up taking part in our set-
I’m afraid we drowned him out a bit- man, he had some seriously vocal Download fans
in the front row - we still owe him a power cord borrowed from a friend- so Mark if
you’re reading this- thanks Mark, and sorry about the cord- give us your address
again and we’ll fire one off to you-I have always been a zoviet france and propeller
fan and it was cool to have the chance to talk to him and incorporate someone new into the
live set- I don’t know if he enjoyed himself or not. . .
Last Sigh: You find sounds and then what?
Matmos: Then we make the sounds fight each other to the death. Some sounds just win out
because they are more crisp, more articulate, more expressive- usually we will select a
few sound sources and just improvise to tape with them for a while. We listen back and a
family of samples and files is built up and then played and sequenced- maybe 50 or 60
loops are generated which are all in synch- we spend hours listening, figuring out which
ones work best with each other and then the song is "cut" into a shape. Then
we’ll usually re-play the source object or instrument on top ("solo-ing" I
guess) and that’s chopped up and processed. We may do a few generations of this
before we find something we like.
