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.
Roses and Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein
Matmos Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
"A goose has no teeth."
"A rose has no teeth."
This last at any rateâ
one would like to sayâ
is obviously true!
It is even surer that a goose has none.
And yet it is none so clear.
The goose has none in its jaw.
And neither, of course, has it any in its wings;
but no one means that when he says it has no teeth.
Why, suppose one were to say:
the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it,
so the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast.
This would not be absurd,
because one has no notion in advance where to look for teeth in a rose.
(Connexion with "pain in someone else's body".)
The lyrics of Matmos's song, "Roses and Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein," resonates with one of Wittgenstein's philosophical conundrums, which highlights the ambiguity of language and the limitations of knowledge. The first three lines, "A new born child has no teeth," "A goose has no teeth," and "A rose has no teeth," suggest that certain things are evidently true. However, the last statement, "This last at any rate, one would like to say, is obviously true!" is meant to be a puzzling paradox, which is the central focus of Wittgenstein's philosophical exploration.
The lyrics further emphasize the ambiguity of language and the challenge of pinning down the true meaning of words. For instance, the statement, "the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it," creates an analogy between the digestive system of a cow and the life cycle of a rose. The idea that the rose has "teeth in the mouth of a beast" portrays the complexity of language and forces one to question what the actual meaning of "teeth" is in this context.
Overall, the lyrics of "Roses and Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein" brings to light Wittgenstein's ideas on the limits of knowledge and the complexity of language. It is a testament not only to the philosophical musings of Wittgenstein but also to the creativity of Matmos, who uses music as a medium to explore and express ideas that are not limited to the realm of sounds.
Line by Line Meaning
A new born child has no teeth.
When a child is born, it does not have any teeth yet. This is a known fact.
A goose has no teeth.
It is commonly known that a goose does not have teeth.
A rose has no teeth.
It is commonly believed that a rose does not have teeth.
This last at any rate\u00e2\u0080\u008b\u00e2\u0080\u008b\none would like to say\u00e2\u0080\u008b\u00e2\u0080\u008b\nis obviously true!
The fact that a rose does not have teeth is something that everyone accepts as being absolutely true.
It is even surer that a goose has none.
The accepted truth that a goose does not have teeth is even more certain than the fact that a rose does not have teeth.
And yet it is none so clear.
Despite the general belief that roses and geese do not have teeth, there is still some uncertainty around this fact.
For where should a rose's teeth have been?
Since roses do not seem to have a place where teeth could grow, it is hard to imagine them having teeth.
The goose has none in its jaw.
Although geese do not have teeth in their jaws like other animals, this is not surprising or unusual.
And neither, of course, has it any in its wings;
It is obvious that geese do not have teeth in their wings either, just like any other animal.
but no one means that when he says it has no teeth.
When people say that a goose has no teeth, they only mean that it does not have teeth in its mouth, not in its whole body.
Why, suppose one were to say:\nThe cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it,
If someone were to suggest that a cow eats food and then poops it out, and then a rose uses that poop as fertilizer to grow, they might argue that the rose has 'teeth' because it benefits from the cow's digestion.
so the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast.
The argument that the rose has 'teeth' in this scenario is because it indirectly benefits from the cow's digestive process.
This would not be absurd,\nbecause one has no notion in advance where to look for teeth in a rose.
This argument is not necessarily absurd because one can't know in advance where teeth might exist in the natural world, so anything is technically possible.
(Connexion with "pain in someone else's body".)
There is a possible connection between this discussion of teeth and the philosophical problem of understanding pain in someone else's body, but its specific meaning or relevance is not explained by the lyrics.
Contributed by Camden L. Suggest a correction in the comments below.