Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo from San Francisco signed to the Matador Records label. 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. Much of their work could be classified as a pop version of the musique concrète genre.

Notable work

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 of 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.In their recordings and live performances over the last nine years, Matmos have used the sounds of: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, water hitting copper plates, the runout groove of a vinyl record, a $5.00 electric guitar, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, violins, rat cages, tanks of helium, violas, human skulls, cellos, peck horns, tubas, cards shuffling, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs, frequency response tests for defective hearing aids, a steel guitar recorded in a sewer, electrical interference generated by laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions and balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones on a dinner plate, Polish trains, insects, ukulele, aspirin tablets hitting a drum kit from across the room, dogs barking, people reading aloud, life support systems and inflatable blankets, records chosen by the roll of dice, an acupuncture point detector conducting electrical current through human skin, rock salt crunching underfoot, solid gold coins spinning on bars of solid silver, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, semen hitting paper, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal and the vagina, uterus, and reproductive tract of a cow, among other things. This could be the reason Kid606 has called them "the A-Team of Electronica,"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Sweat_the_Technics or else the latter's homo-erotic overtones.

Personal life

M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are also a romantic couple, as stated in an interview in BUTT Magazine.Schmidt busies himself working in the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.Daniel has successfully defended his dissertation on the literary cult of Melancholy, directed by Janet Adelman at the University of California, Berkeley, and beginning in Fall 2007 will be an assistant professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University. Daniel also has a personal dance music project, The Soft Pink Truth. He is also a contributing writer to the online music magazine Pitchfork Media. Both Schmidt and Daniel appeared in the Sagan music DVD filmed by Ryan Junell.

Trivia

• The name Matmos refers to the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film Barbarella. The alternate spelling, "Mathmos," is used by a lava lamp manufacturer.
• Matmos' private record label Vague Terrain is a reference to the publishing company and bookstore in Paris that originally distributed the comic book upon which the film was based.

Discography

Albums

• Matmos (1998, OLE-380)
• Quasi-Objects (1998, OLE-381)
• The West (1999)
• A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (March 13 2001, OLE-489)
• The Civil War (2003)
• The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast (2006, OLE-677)

EPs

• Full On Night Split Disc with Rachel's (2000, Quarterstick)
• California Rhinoplasty (2001 Feb 12, OLE-501)
• Rat Relocation Program (2004)
• For Alan Turing (2006)

Limited edition

• Matmos Live with J Lesser (2002)
• A Viable Alternative to Actual Sexual Contact, as Vague Terrain Recordings (2002, Piehead Records)