Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Has anyone heard the new Matmos record?

Via Pitchfork's review of the new Matmos record, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast:
Each track is just as thematically tight-- scored and curated to the smallest detail. "Snails and Lasers for Patricia Highsmith" uses the mystery writer's snail obsession-- she supposedly kept hundreds of them as pets, and she wrote about them in works like the short story, "The Snail-Watcher"-- as the slimy composers of that piece. The technique: A laser was pointed at a light-sensitive theremin; snails were let loose within the theremin's range, fucking with its pitch. The result is an ominous, hard-boiled brushed jazz piece accented with what sounds like a harpsichord flourish. It eventually turns into a bleakly paranoid theremin landscape as the snails frolic in slow motion.
[snip]
Another piece based primarily around a written text is "Tract For Valerie Solanas". The same way Sunn 0))) was nailed for recording Xasthur in a coffin, Matmos will get a lot of column space for playing a cow uterus and vagina as tribute to the woman best known for shooting Andy Warhol. Sunn 0))) was aiming for claustrophobia and positioning Xasthur as cryptic solo artist; in a similarly smart way, the moo parts are a great pun on both the cow's goods (its reproductive tract) and Solanas's S.C.U.M. Manifesto (a feminist tract). Score.


UPDATE: Score! The iTunes store has samples.

UPDATE 2: While I can't hear the cow ladyparts on the "Solanas" track, the Patricia Highsmith piece sounds pretty snazzy (in that Angelo Badalamenti/sinister cocktail jazz kind of way). I might just have to pick this shizz up.

2 Comments:

At 4:55 PM, Blogger John Barleycorn said...

I could see how this would be bad.

I could see how this would be excellent.

You'll have to let us know, Benjamin.

 
At 12:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanks for digging these up for us.

 

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