Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisc… Read Full Bio ↴Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore. M. C. (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their performances, including notably J Lesser. Apart from releasing seven full-length studio albums and numerous collaborative works, Matmos is also well known for their collaboration with Icelandic singer and musician Björk, both on studio recordings and live tours. After being signed to Matador Records for nine years, Matmos signed with Thrill Jockey in 2012. The name Matmos refers to the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film Barbarella.
In 1998, Matmos remixed the Björk single Alarm Call. Subsequently, Matmos worked with Björk on her albums Vespertine (2001) and Medúlla (2004), as well as her Vespertine and Greatest Hits tours. In November 2004, Matmos spent 97 hours in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as artists in residence, performing music with friends, musical guests and onlookers. The live album Work, Work, Work, essentially a "best of" collection of the session, was released as a free download from their website.
Matmos gained notoriety for their use of samples including "freshly cut hair" and "the amplified neural activity of crayfish" on their first album and "recorded the snips, clicks, snaps, and squelches of various surgical procedures, then nipped and tucked them into seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno" for their album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure.
In 2011, Matmos participated in a programmed evening of events with the visual arts organisation Auto Italia South East. The event was produced in collaboration with record label Upset The Rhythm.co.uk/ Upset The Rhythm and included contributions from experimental electronic musicians Jon Wiese and Birds of Delay. Matmos have since collaborated with a large number of visual artists and arts organisations, including Cafe Oto and Metal.
M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are also a couple, as stated in an interview in BUTT Magazine.
Schmidt formerly worked as a teacher in the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Daniel successfully defended his dissertation on the literary cult of melancholy, directed by Janet Adelman at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently an associate professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University. This brought the band to relocate their home base to Baltimore in August 2007. Daniel also has a personal dance music project, The Soft Pink Truth. He is a contributing writer to the online music magazine Pitchfork Media, and wrote an essay about the Throbbing Gristle album 20 Jazz Funk Greats for the Continuum Books series 33 1/3. Both Schmidt and Daniel appeared in the Sagan music film Unseen Forces by Ryan Junell.
In 1998, Matmos remixed the Björk single Alarm Call. Subsequently, Matmos worked with Björk on her albums Vespertine (2001) and Medúlla (2004), as well as her Vespertine and Greatest Hits tours. In November 2004, Matmos spent 97 hours in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as artists in residence, performing music with friends, musical guests and onlookers. The live album Work, Work, Work, essentially a "best of" collection of the session, was released as a free download from their website.
Matmos gained notoriety for their use of samples including "freshly cut hair" and "the amplified neural activity of crayfish" on their first album and "recorded the snips, clicks, snaps, and squelches of various surgical procedures, then nipped and tucked them into seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno" for their album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure.
In 2011, Matmos participated in a programmed evening of events with the visual arts organisation Auto Italia South East. The event was produced in collaboration with record label Upset The Rhythm.co.uk/ Upset The Rhythm and included contributions from experimental electronic musicians Jon Wiese and Birds of Delay. Matmos have since collaborated with a large number of visual artists and arts organisations, including Cafe Oto and Metal.
M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are also a couple, as stated in an interview in BUTT Magazine.
Schmidt formerly worked as a teacher in the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Daniel successfully defended his dissertation on the literary cult of melancholy, directed by Janet Adelman at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently an associate professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University. This brought the band to relocate their home base to Baltimore in August 2007. Daniel also has a personal dance music project, The Soft Pink Truth. He is a contributing writer to the online music magazine Pitchfork Media, and wrote an essay about the Throbbing Gristle album 20 Jazz Funk Greats for the Continuum Books series 33 1/3. Both Schmidt and Daniel appeared in the Sagan music film Unseen Forces by Ryan Junell.
Plastic Anniversary
Matmos Lyrics
We have lyrics for these tracks by Matmos:
For the Trees Was a long and dark December From the rooftops I remember Th…
Roses and Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein "A new born child has no teeth." "A goose has no…
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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@msdos
It cracks me up how lossy the audio is in this great video. I think I actually like it? These guys turn medical equipment and rat cages into brilliantly produced hi-def orchestrations, but here it sounds like they accidentally sent the file back into the 90s via RealAudio stream and lived with the results. It creates a funny distance between my eyes and ears. I guess the artifacts sound sorta neat in themselves, too.
I love Matmos. Plastic Anniversary is a fantastic record and it continues to grow on me. My god, just listen to those beats! Knowing everything is sourced from plastics just adds an extra dimension of appreciation for what they’ve done. It’s also twistedly melodic, sometimes gorgeous. And it’s a unique object that’s both thoroughly synthesized (its plastic sources, the transformations of the audio recordings) and highly concrete (the sounds come from the real-world objects we’ve created/produced; we have a serious relationship with plastics in our actual lives; and it’s basically a super-musical form of music concrete). It’s also pretty abstract in some ways. This album is lots of things! All the way to its conclusion, the synthetic ocean “field recording,” just a tad too uncanny to be relaxing. I’m actually really curious how they made that one.
@themusicaljunkie37
Damn, i always wanted to make an album that's pretty much noisy rock but all the percussions are from everyday objects and sounds... these two are so inspiring..
@sammystank7174
Greatest of our time I swear to God you two are way too humble
@robertsyrett1992
1:09 The face Martin makes when he suggests they should be a podcast 😂😂😂
@SNO-
Found a new sound today!! I am so happy, proud, astonished, and just plain flabbergasted (yeah I use this word) I have never heard of Matmos'! (must have been deaf) Well, ... I have now! Downloaded the new Sample pack https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/matmos-making-their-free-sample-pack/ and now I am overly excited to dig into it. Thank you for the "day-after-xmas" surprise and the video link on the Ableton page. This is what I do on my albums turn/make sounds into rhythmic (sometimes cacophonous) music. Nice to see I am really not alone lol
@vinylmeister4333
this is why i love matmos so much
@aboxintheblack9530
What an amazing apolitical album.
@neildevine3056
this album was insane
@udomatthiasdrums5322
love it!!
@kenmc555
These guys are the left and right brain of God, seperated and cast unto Earth.