So, the time of Primavera and ATP festival (sadly their last ever May weekender) rolls around again and a ton of our bands decide it’d also be a good time to visit our (at the moment, rather sunny) shores. Just like last year.
With 3 European tours starting over this weekend, plus more to come over the next we have the following shows taking place over the next 25 days….. (though I’m not sure how much Golf they’ll have time for)
Esben and the Witch
9th – Manufaktur, Schorndorf, Germany
10th – Mascotte, Zurich, Switzerland
11th – Spazio 211, Turin, Italy
12th – Circolo degli Artisti, Rome, Italy
13th – Plastic, Milan, Italy
14th – Covo, Bologna, Italy
16th – Palace, St Gallen, Switzerland
17th – Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany
18th – Doornroosje, Groningen, Netherlands
19th – Bitterzoet Club, Amsterdam, Netherlands
20th – Rotown, Rotterdam, Netherlands
21st – Charlatan, Ghent, Belgium
22nd – Les Nuits Botanique (Orangerie), Brussels, Belgium
24th – Gleiss 22, Munster, Germany
25th – Karlstorbahnhof, Heidleburg, Germany
26th – Atomic Cafe, Munich, Germany
27th – B72, Vienna, Austria
28th – Seewiesen Festival, Linz, Austria
29th – K4, Nurnberg, Germany
Kurt Vile (& The Violators)
8th : King Georg, Koln
9th : Feierwerk, Munich (+ O’Death)
10th : Chelsea Club, Vienna
11th : Festsaal Kreuzberg, Berlin
12th : Vega (Small Hall), Copenhagen
13th : Voxhall, Aarhus
14th : All Tomorrow’s Parties. Minehead (curated by Animal Collective)
15th : Tivoli, Utrecht
16th : Bitterzoet, Amsterdam
17th : Les Nuits de Botanique (Rotunde), Brussels
18th : Charlatan, Gent
19th : Rough Trade East, London (free in-store, 1pm)
19th : Corsica Studio, London SOLD OUT
20th : Kazimier, Liverpool (Sound City)
21st : Captain’s Rest, Glasgow (Stag and Dagger Festival)
San Francisco’s best dressed men, Matmos, return to Europe this May with Mr J. Lesser in tow.
14/05/11 Glasgow (UK), Old Fruitmarket
15/05/11 Birmingham (UK), MAC Art Centre *
17/05/11 Belfast (UK), SARC *
18/05/11 Dublin (IE), Button Factory *
19/05/11 London (UK), Auto-Italia *
21/05/11 Torino (IT), Museum Arte Contemporanea Rivoli *
23/05/11 Rome (IT), Circolo degli Artisti *
24/05/11 Bologna (IT), Locomotiv *
26/05/11 Paris (FR), La Gaite Lyrique *
27/05/11 Brussels (BE), VK *#
28/05/11 Metz (FR), Les Trinitaires *
29/05/11 Berlin (DE), Hau1 * (date swapped with Leipzig)
30/05/11 Leipzig (DE), Centraltheater * (date swapped with Berlin)
* w/ John Wiese
# w/ Oval
And if you ever wondered what the basement of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel’s Baltimore home looks like, then skip the car commercials and have a look at their Electric Independence.
Even though we’d been convinced that all that slaving away at the myriad marketing gimmicks, “promo opportunities” and general suffering we put bands through would leave us with some very exhausted talent, it turns out that these guys just can’t stop doing thangs… read on to see what some of our beloved have been up to.
Though she’s on tour with the New Pornographers, as we speak, Kathryn Calder just put the finishing touches on her new solo record. On August 11 the world’ll be treated to ‘Are You My Mother?’ which features an all-star band featuring Neko, Kurt and Todd from The New Pornographers and a handful of other Canadian musical luminaries. Check File Under: Music for more info.
Mogwaiwill be releasing the pretty stunning looking live LP entitled, ‘Special Moves’to coincide with the release of their first live film ‘Burning’, which was filmed in Brooklyn during the band’s tour in support of ‘The Hawk Is Howling’ in April of 2009. Check Mogwai’s site for info on ordering the record and where you can catch screenings of ‘Burning’.
Following the release of their live-film, Dead Meadow released their second live album ‘Three Kings’ and soundtrack to aforementioned film, on the Xemu label in April.
Matmos‘ Drew Daniel and Martin Schmitt have teamed up with So Percussion on a collaboration entitled ‘Treasure State‘ — expect to have your mind twisted on July 8. Cantaloupe Records sez: “The record had a complex gestation period: at the invitation of Brett Allen, the members of Matmos and So Percussion went to the SnowGhost Studios in Whitefish, Montana– the Treasure State which gives the album its title– and collaboratively generated the bulk of the songs. San Francisco plunderphonicist Wobbly then chopped and edited the results on several tracks, and finally, with frequent interventions from Matmos’ M. C. Schmidt, “fifth” So Percussion member and producer Lawson White overdubbed extra elements, processed, and mixed the results.” There’s a handful of live dates, to boot!
Not sure exactly how we spaced on this one, but as always, the Matablog is to roster news what Tom Scholz is to Boston albums. VERY LATE BUT WELL-INTENTIONED. From Brainwashed.com :
It may be a bit short to call a tour – a “tourette”, perhaps? – but our European friends will be happy to know that Matmos will be over there very soon for a few performances:
JUNE
1 – Zagreb, HR @ Kset Club
2 – Beograd (Belgrade), RS @ Rex
MATMOS AND LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA
Hugh Brunt, Conductor
Supported by Sarah Nicolls and Micromattic
Tuesday 26 and Wednesday 27 May 2009, 8.00pm
Village Underground, Shoreditch
An adventurous collaboration between musical worlds is headlined by one of the giants of the electronic music scene, Matmos, performing with members of the LCO on material from Supreme Balloon arranged by the young composer Anna Meredith. In the hands of pianist Sarah Nicolls, that most familiar of instruments becomes augmented and reinvented for the 21st century, a bespoke contraption pushing at the boundaries of performance. LCO’s first commission of the season comes from Howard Quin and Micromattic, a thrilling audio-visual installation integrating live performance, electronic soundtracks and fractal animation.
Tickets available online or via Barbican Box Office: 020 7638 8891
(Matmos and So Percussion at the Whitney, 2006, pic taken from maggiemoo1‘s flickr feed)
We were fortunate enough to receive the following communication from Matmos earlier this week ;
We (Matmos) are playing quite an unusual show this weekend in the extremely important city of New York at a venue called the Kitchen. We are playing with the So Percussion Quartet and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra-at the same time…it’s really quite an extravaganza of sound, both timbre-wise and spacially. Fans of the Acousmonium take note, this sort of thing doesn’t happen often in the United States.
All the information you might need (except plane tickets and stuff, if you don’t live in New York) is here:
http://www.thekitchen.org/
Thank you for reading my spam,
love,
M.C. Schmidt
Matmos
p.s. If you are REALLY in this for the spacial thing, we’re doing this evening again in Princeton itself (considered possibly more pleasant than New York by some) with 25 laptoppists! Count ‘em TWENTY FIVE! A month later on May 16th. Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium.
….but if you were cleaning up all the jpgs on your desktop and happened to come across a photo of Matmos’ Drew Daniel a) wearing a Burzum tee and b) standing in front of what appears to be A BURNED DOWN CHURCH, what would you do?
That’s right. You’d post the pic to the Matablog. Enjoy your monday.
Matmos’s Drew Daniel will read from his book on Throbbing Gristle (Throbbing Gristle: Twenty Jazz Funk Greats, 33 1/3 Books), answer questions, and do a Soft Pink Truth performance (aka dance party).
Matmos will present new improvised material tomorrow night (Sept. 6) at The Stone (2nd and Ave. C, New York City) at 8pm and 10pm, joined by special guests Lisle Ellis and Zeena Parkins. Y’know, I used to live on Ave. C and 4th Street and that was a very different neighborhood before Applebee’s, Old Navy and the Cheesecake Factory all set up shop.
On the other hand, there’s hardly any chance of walking into a False Prophets gig by accident anymore, so who am I to say progress is a bad thing?
Matmos, currently touring North America in support of their most recent LP/CD, ‘Supreme Balloon’, will be playing at Chicago’s Permanent Records on July 26. We hope you can attend. Not in lieu of the show at the Lakeshore Theatre or anything, but preferably, both.
(Live in Prague 6/18/08 – Photo via Félix Adorno‘s Flickr page)
Tomorrow (Friday, July 11) at 11:00 AM (PST), Matmos stop by San Francisco’s KUSF for a live performance on the program “Hearts on Sleeves”. Bay Area residents can catch the program on terrestrial radio at 90.3 FM, while the rest can access a webstream online at www.kusf.org.
EDIT – Direct from Matmos:
“…We will improvise on Irwin’s show for your drive time pleasure. With Wobbly. Your car will shake. Your booty will clap. Your speakers will scratch their heads, wondering, why has no one pleasured me this way before?”
6 bristol venn festival
8 london beaconfield gallery
9 london beaconfield gallery with carter/tutti
12 dublin future days festival
15 amsterdam holland festival special program stockhausen mikrophonie
17 berlin festhall kreuzberg with carter / tutti
18 praha archa teatro
19 wienna szene wien
20 lubljana teatro
21 barcelona sonar festival
July
7-Seattle, WA @ Triple Door*
10-Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater*
12-SF, CA @ Great American Music Hall*
15-Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theatre*
18-New York, NY @ LPR (formerly Village Gate on 158 Bleecker St)**
19-New York, NY @ LPR**
21-Toronto, ONT @ THe Music Gallery**
23-Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center**
24-Detroit, MI @ Detroit Institute of Arts**
25-Pittsburgh, PA @ Andy Warhol Museum**
27-Chicago, IL @ Lakeshore Theater**
For the first time, we’re making our annual ‘Intended Play’ label sampler available digitally. Click on the link to get a zipped file of all 12 tracks plus front and back artwork, and burn it yourself (or just listen to it digitally):
1. Jay Reatard Always Wanting More (from 7″ #3, due out June 17 June 24)
2. Times New Viking DROP-OUT (from Rip It Off, released January 22)
3. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks Cold Son (from Real Emotional Trash, released March 4)
4. Shearwater Leviathan, Bound (from Rook, due out June 3)
5. Cat Power Metal Heart (from Jukebox, released January 22)
6. Matmos Polychords (from Supreme Balloon, due out May 6)
7. Mission Of Burma That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate (from Vs.: The Definitive Edition, released today, March 18)
8. Jaguar Love Bats Over The Pacific Ocean (from Take Me To The Sea, due out this summer August 19)
9. The Cave Singers Helen (from Invitation Songs, released last September)
10. Dead Meadow I’m Gone (from Old Growth, released February 5)
11. The New Pornographers All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth (live) (from Live From Soho (iTunes Exclusive), released March 11)
12. Earles & Jensen Bleachy Is Back In Town, Look Out (from Just Farr A Laugh Vols. 1 & 2: The Greatest Prank Phone Calls Ever!, due out April 22 May 6)
The sharp-eyed among you will note that some of these tracks are not the ones released as promo MP3s to date.
While we’re smack in the middle of planning for the new Matmos LP/CD ‘Supreme Ballon’ (yesterday’s marketing meeting was a doozy — especially the pronounciation debate over “mobile”), Drew and Martin will be in New York this weekend, presenting two shows at The Stone (Avenue C and 2nd Street) on Saturday night at 8 and 10pm.
Matmos will be performing their version of Robert Ashley‘s ‘Perfect Lives’ along with additional material. Tickes are $10 (half price for students between the ages of 13 and 19) and are not available in advance.
The new album from Matmos finds the dynamic duo taking a holiday from conceptual responsibility, skipping the outré sampling antics in favor of a lighthearted “cosmic pop” record made entirely out of synthesizers. Leave it to Matmos to invent a hard and fast rule that they have to follow even when they’re just having fun: the creative restriction this time around is that “Supreme Balloon” is an ALL synthesizer album and no microphones were used at any point. That’s right, no household objects played in a percussive manner, no snails or blood or amplified semen, no acoustic instruments, no voices of famous people for five seconds, not even any half-way cheating with Vocoders, just synthesizers of all shapes, sizes, eras and nationalities being snipped, folded and reshuffled by an arsenal of samplers and computers into colorful sound-origami.
Gear fetishists take note: the exotic and antiquated synths used on the record heavily spotlight the classic 60s/70s/80s consumer electronic rigs of Arp, Korg, Roland, Waldorf and Moog, and feature modular systems from Electro-Comp, Doepfer and Akai (hell, even a stylophone and a Suzuki Omnichord show up); these were recorded at home in San Francisco, California and in the SnowGhost studio at Whitefish, Montana. But there are also completely unique, one-of-a-kind modular curios present, such as the “Coupigny” modular synthesizer housed in the INA/GRM studios at Radio France in Paris and used extensively by some of the titans of musique-concrete. Guest players invited to the party include living treasure of American jazz Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra (he plays the E.V.I. or Electronic Voice Instrument, a breath controlled oscillator, on “Mister Mouth”), Bay Area troublemakers Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly), East Coast electroacoustic sages Jay Lesser and Keith Fullerton Whitman, and classically trained pianist Sarah Cahill. Plus, our roll-call of the good and great would be remiss if we didn’t mention that the gatefold double vinyl and ITunes edition of the album also includes the bonus track “Hashish Master” that features a guest solo synth improvisation from none-other-than minimalist mastermind Terry Riley(!). Though it was recorded all over the world over the last two years, the whole shebang was finished in Baltimore, Maryland (the band’s new home, at least as long as Drew Daniel is a professor in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University), and comes encased in some truly gorgeous watercolor artwork by Robert Syrett.
To break it down: the album drops with a bumpin’ front end of four rhythmic workouts (perky, stomping, toe-tapping, and shuffling, respectively) that coach Perrey & Kingsley and 8-bit video game music and kitsch Latin Moogsploitation into some freaky positions. Then things take a classy European vacation in which the baroque composer Francois Couperin’s “Les Folies Francaises” is given the Wendy Carlos treatment. Then the band turn a corner into unexpected, ambitious new territory and things swell to a truly ridiculous/heroic climax. The jewel in the crown is the album’s title track, a 24 minute monster synth jam that builds from a lone Roland SH-101 wobbling your sub-woofers into a celestial, psychedelic epic whose spiraling arpeggios recall the sidelong LP-era mind-journeys of Cluster, Mother Mallard and Vangelis. Riding an insistent tabla pattern courtesy of a “Taal Mala” drum machine from India, warm, bubbling layers of analogue synthesis, and the chattering and chirping of MAX patches shaking hands with boutique EFX pedals, it’s a long strange trip indeed. Things cool down with an ambient air kiss and it’s over.
We know you’re probably shaking your head and thinking to yourself, “an electronic band makes an all-electronic album? These guys must be CRAZY.” And you’d be right. Consider this revenge for all those Queen records whose liner notes said “And nobody played the synthesizer!”, and a sweet surprise from a truly unpredictable American band.
“Rainbow Flag” – mp3, from ‘Supreme Baloon’ LP/CD (US- May 6, 2008, UK/EU, May 5 2008)
We’re gonna have a long, thrilling announcement for you very shortly concerning the new Matmos LP/CD, but prior to that, here’s the latest bit of extracurricular news from Drew Daniel :
Pardon my mass missive but I wanted to spread the word that I am now a published author. Thanks to the trusty/crusty crew of the Continuum imprint, I now have my own contribution to their 33 1/3 series of books, complete with an ISBN number and a Library of Congress Data tag and everything. My book is called “Twenty Jazz Funk Greats” and it is about the album of said name by the English band Throbbing Gristle. It weighs in at 176 (teensy) pages. It features original interviews with all four members of Throbbing Gristle, some never-before-published photos and/or drawings from their private notebooks, and lots of interpretive blood sweat and tears from yours truly. Check it out!
Yes, the fine men of Matmos will once again grace these shores (England, that is) on July 1st for a date in the Royal Festival Hall with our old pal Cornelius.
Matmos, along with Jay Lesser, will be playing at the Donau Festival in Austria in a couple of weeks time.
What kind of festival is it? Well, it's being curated by David Tibet, so I imagine it'll be very similar to Lollapalooza. The website is here.
EDIT: Actually guys, I've never been to Lollapalooza. Fennesz, SUNN O))), Nurse With Wound, Khan, Six Organs of Admittance – it's all that kind of thing, right?
EDIT: Oh, maybe a more accurate comparison would be like a more fun No Fun Fest. So, fun, then.
EDIT: By 'fun', I mean PUNISHING NOIZE. And The Notwist.
The smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd. To paraphrase Hugo Chavez, we can almost smell the sulpher from here, such is the devilish musical mosaic weaved by Martin, Drew and So Percussion.
10.06.06 Wexner Center for the Arts Columbus OH 10.07.06 Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh PA 10.08.06 St. George the Martyr Church – Music Gallery Toronto On 10.09.06 St. George the Martyr Church – Music Gallery Toronto On 10.10.06 Le National Montreal Qu 10.11.06 The International House Philadelphia PA 10.12.06 Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Boston MA 10.13.06 Symphony Space – Leonard Nimoy Thalia New York NY 10.14.06 Symphony Space – Leonard Nimoy Thalia New York NY 10.17.06 Jensen RecCenter Los Angeles CA 10.18.06 Great American Music Hall San Francisco CA 10.20.06 Holocene Portland OR 10.21.06 The Triple Door Seattle WA
The Matmos Paris France experience proved to be more graceful and elegant than the earthier and rocking Matmos London England experience. A bit like Paris versus London all over really. I guess the tone was set by the cultural palace that is the Centre Pompidou versus the garish red walls and velvet of Koko. But it was also the appearance on stage of the grand piano, its raised lid echoing the curves of the full sized classical harp. Both these instruments were missing from London.
The shows starts with Nate walking on to the powerful filmed imagery of the rose emerging from a cows uterus. The screen is massive (as is the stage) Disembodied plastic gloved hands manipulate both flower and body part. The song this accompanied, “Tract For Valerie Solonas”, ends with Martin playing a large inflated helium balloon. “YTTE” proves to be a crowd pleaser. “Roses and Teeth For Ludwig Wittgenstein” is propelled by Nate and Zeena using bunches of red roses as drumsticks. Petals fly into the air leaving the centre stage with a carpet of red. “Germs Burn For Darby Crash” starts with the unsettling footage of a cigarette burning Drews forearm and the gasp of his pain. An audience volunteer has his head shaved into a Mohawk with an amplified electric shaver by Martin. As the performance ends the audience calls for an encore. The house lights go up but people want more. After another song the band have to return to the stage to a standing ovation. Paris loves Matmos! And so do I. Both the London and Paris shows were stunning in their own right.
First up, I’ve got to apologize for these pictures. Between myself and Mike, we managed to make concert photos look like surveillance footage. I’ve seen clearer photos of the Loch Ness monster. Mike did get this photo of Martin wearing a rather lovely cushion/hat afterwards, though.
Second up (is that a term?), I must apologize for the lack of Haswell/Hecker noize action. You may remember a few weeks ago I did a post extolling the virtues of Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker, whom I thought were supporting Matmos at the Koko show. Well, they weren’t. Sorry. It had nothing to do with me or the men of Matmos. Haswell/Hecker are performing as support for Sunn 0))) and Burning Star Core at this year’s Frieze festival, though, and I’ll be there, so you can berate me in person if it makes you feel better.
Anyways, on to Matmos. They do occupy that strange area of performance where it seems equally appropriate that they play seated venues or club spaces. Although I had my reservations, Koko turned out to be perfect – a very theatrical venue that normally plays host to indie rock and A-list celebrity pop shows decked out in chairs for a show by a band who bridge the muscal gap between…well, everything, really.
Current collaboroator Zeena Parkins did a couple of pieces on her own first, and she is now my favourite working harpist (screw you Newsom). Eschewing any normal sounds you might hear emanating from a harp, Parkins instead built loops of buzzing string drone, and blasting waves of noise by attacking her instrument with what looked like a pumice stone. It was very different from what I’d heard from her in the past, and I’d love to see a full set from her. Like NOW.
Zeena returned to the stage about 15 minutes later and began reading from Valerie Solanis’ ‘S.C.U.M’ Manifesto. And then on came Martin and Drew, aided by Nate Boyce and began to build a room-rattling take on ‘Tract For Valerie Solanis’ – I really cannot emphasise enough just how powerful the bass was last night (you know when you can feel it in your teeth?). Nate’s visuals for this involved the bizarre sight of a rose slowly opening out of a cow’s uterus, which was as funny and disturbing as the song itself. They proceeded to charge through a fairly dance-heavy set (maybe cause it was a seated show), and I was ecstatic to hear them do ‘YTTE’ from ‘The Civil War’, replete with all sorts of abstract harp strums from Ms Parkins. ‘Rag For William S Burroughs’ was denser and shorter than it’s album incarnation, and ‘Steam And Sequins For Larry Levan’ climaxed with all four performers hammering away on bongos and triangle for maximum disco action, coupled with Nate’s epilepsy-inducing visuals – I didn’t see, but surely someone must have been dancing on the bar. Surely.
Watching the first season of ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ and listening to composer Carl Stalling this weekend was a perfect setup for going to see Matmos – they’re all artists who apply all their academic enthusiasm to bending high-culture (Fry & Laurie: literature & language, Stalling: orchestral composition, Matmos: music concrete) into inappropriate, populist and occasionally silly shapes without forfeiting any of their fierce intelligence. This is even more apparent for Matmos live – it’s usually about halfway through the gig when after being blindsided by the music itself, I start to think ‘Hang on, how the hell are they doing this?’. And apparently, it involves sticking metal tubes into dry ice.
In conclusion, it was a fun and baffling night out.
When Lucy told us who was supporting Matmos (with Zeena Parkins) at their upcoming London show, I got so giddy that she and Mike could only gaze at me, horrified, as I drooled between exhortations of excitement. As Matador UK’s resident noise enthusiast, the news that Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker will be putting the digital smackdown on a pre-Matmos audience is as good as it gets.
Both mainstays of the now partly defunct other ‘best record label beginning with M’, Mego, Haswell and Hecker have been pushing the envelope for quite some time now. Russell Haswell, A&R for Mego, curated the Easy To Swallow club nights for All Tomorrow’s Parties, bringing together people like Mark Stewart, Whitehouse, Autechre, Robert Hood, Earth, Aphex Twin etc for nights of uneasy dancing, and has recorded as Satanstornade with Masami Akita (Merzbow), which resulted in the best album cover ever. His ‘Live Salvage‘ album on Mego is incredible. Florian Hecker (above), along with Yasonao Tone performed one of the most intensely visceral noise shows that I’ve ever witnessed. His masterpiece, ‘Sun Pandamonium‘ is utterly, utterly terrifying. The centrepiece, ‘Stocha Acid Zlook’ sounds like pterodactyls swooping above you, with screaming victims in their mouths, occasionally getting close enough to draw blood from your ears. I am not mad, that’s exactly what it sounds like. Hecker and Haswell have recorded together once – on the ‘Revision‘ 12″. ‘Harrowing’ is how I’d describe it.
Basically, I’m as excited as it’s possible to be without bursting.
From left to right, Mark Lightcap, M.C. Schmidt, Drew Daniel. Matmos under the Biz 3 tent at the Pitchfork Festival, Saturday afternoon. Not shown : the guy who spilled his drink over my trousers, the former P.R. maven masquerading as a homeless person, nor Jeremy Piven.
Dead Meadow shot by 
