Operating with a radically democratic approach, the duo - who are also a couple - take turns conceptualizing what each album will be. “We tend to make work which we regard as conceptual,” said Daniel, “in the sense that we make a conceptual commitment to an idea, then we think about all the possible actions and events or objects, which express or manifest that idea in a way which could be made sonic. Then we have to do the research of getting into situations where we can acquire the recordings of those actions or events or objects. Then we take it home to our studio and build it into music.” If that sounds arduous, consider the ways that Matmos has been able to make truly novel, surprising and experimental work. They are, in the purest sense, constantly experimenting. Their body of work appeals in equal parts to fans of Coil’s occult electronica, Aphex Twin’s classic late-’90s run, the cerebral masterworks of Xenakis and Maryanne Amacher and the most left-leaning post-punk. They return to Knockdown Center on June 21. Here’s a look back at some of their finest outings.

A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure

A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure is perhaps Matmos’ most famous work. Whether or not it’s their most heard, it’s certainly the most talked about; the album is sourced largely from plastic surgery, liposuction and other invasive medical procedures, making it a perfectly prefab anecdote. Matmos weave a tapestry of wrenching, squishy and startling samples around lush strings, pinging percussion and floaty synths. Tellingly, they don’t overtly comment on the “good” or “bad” aspects of their subject matter. Matmos is driven more by curiosity and fascination than moral arbitration. This means the music can be goofy, beautiful or oblique, but it always feels strangely roomy, like they’re inviting you to explore along with them.

Discussing the opening track “Lipostudio… And So On,” the duo expounded (tread carefully if you have a weak stomach):

Daniel: “That track was also a recording made in Southern California of liposuction and we recorded these procedures… You heard lots of ‘real’ instruments, but also the solo in that breakdown is a surgeon, who knew what I wanted was something musically expressive, and so he selected a slightly larger cannula, which is the sucking needle that they use in liposuction.”

Schmidt: “You know, the thing that I used to call the crevice device on vacuum cleaners, to get into corners? It is sort of like that.”

Daniel “And he shoves it into the wound area and starts playing the incision in this woman’s body. She was unconscious at the time. It’s very disturbing, actually, because they do the incisions all at once around the area and they all start to bleed. And so you’re sitting there in this room, it’s a sterile environment and you can’t compromise it and touch anything, and you are just moving a microphone around as carefully as you can and trying to gather these sounds. But what I didn’t expect is that the medical technicians would really get into being musicians and they started to kind of ham it up.”

Björk - Vespertine

Following the recording of A Chance to Cut, Matmos was invited to collaborate with Björk on her new album. Vespertine stands as one of the Icelandic singer’s all-time best outings. Building on the momentum from her Lars von Trier collaboration Dancer in the Dark, Björk and Matmos crafted a cutting edge soundworld of celestial strings, skittering downtempo drums and ethereal atmospheres. It was a match made in heaven, the precursor to the dream team of FKA Twigs and Arca or Charli XCX and Sophie.

But it was not without some friction. Schmidt recalls “Drew had to point out to me about a thousand times during that thing that people who make pop music hopefully want to make pop music, and it’s not like people who make weird noisy music wish they were making pop music. Because I kept feeling like, “Why doesn’t she do something weirder?” Well, because…”

Daniel: “I think Björk has always had a team of people who can make you kind of bulletproof, and she wants people that are a little bit sloppy and a little bit rough and aren’t so used to that. And that wound up being the case when we were there working on programming for Vespertine. We had never been in a studio where you paid by the hour ever in our lives. We had only made records at home in our bedroom until, all of a sudden, we are at Olympic Studios with Spike Stent and he’s mixed Spice Girls, U2 and Madonna and we’re sitting there going, ‘Maybe you should have a breakdown here.’ The first show we played in Paris on that Vespertine tour, we were in the band with Björk, obviously, and Zeena Parkins playing harp. And backstage afterwards Martin and Zeena and I were like, ‘Fuck! I thought people kind of liked our shows. They applaud when we”re done, but no, they don’t like our stuff. This is the real thing.’ We just walked out and people were screaming.”

Return to Archive

The Smithsonian Folkways series is one of the staggering achievements of 20th century ethnomusicology. The label’s vast catalog documents indigenous and folk sounds from across North America and the world. Famously home to Alan Lomax’s incomparable blues recordings - sampled by Moby and the inspiration for much of the music in O Brother, Where Art Thou? - Folkways also has some of the best recordings of Indonesian gamelan, Japanese court music, Congolese vocal music and much, much more.

For 2023’s Return to Archive, Matmos were offered access to the catalog to specifically remix Folkways’ non-musical recordings. Pillaging niche LPs like The Sounds of North American Frogs and Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Matmos builds dizzying worlds of high-speed, rhythmic collage. Their signature sense of humor is well and truly on display. Where it’s easy to imagine another artist going for the moody, the ominous or grotesque, Matmos goes gleeful. Tracks like “Injection Basic Sound” feel like cartoon music for perverts.

The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form

The Consuming Flame is, on paper, the quintessential COVID record, and its release date of August, 2020 would suggest it was the byproduct of Daniel and Schmidt being stuck at home together. So it’s a surprise to find out that the LP, which invites 99 collaborators to separately submit material with the sole constraint of a BPM set at 99, was assembled, edited and completed before the pandemic. Matmos were always prescient.

The roster for The Consuming Flame speaks to Matmos’ beloved position in the music world: Ira Kaplin of Yo La Tengo, Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never and Blake Harrison of Pig Destroyer all appear. Clocking in at over three hours, the album is a motherfucker to get through, but it’s also a vibe. Across its 180 minutes, Matmos crafts a love letter to experimentation, happy accidents and spontaneous collaboration.

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