Matmos - Supreme Balloon

The description of this album excites me:

The new album from Matmos finds the dynamic duo taking a holiday from conceptual responsibility, skipping the outré sampling antics in favor of a lighthearted “cosmic pop” record made entirely out of synthesizers. Leave it to Matmos to invent a hard and fast rule that they have to follow even when they’re just having fun: the creative restriction this time around is that “Supreme Balloon” is an ALL synthesizer album and no microphones were used at any point. That’s right, no household objects played in a percussive manner, no snails or blood or amplified semen, no acoustic instruments, no voices of famous people for five seconds, not even any half-way cheating with Vocoders, just synthesizers of all shapes, sizes, eras and nationalities being snipped, folded and reshuffled by an arsenal of samplers and computers into colorful sound-origami.

Gear fetishists take note: the exotic and antiquated synths used on the record heavily spotlight the classic 60s/70s/80s consumer electronic rigs of Arp, Korg, Roland, Waldorf and Moog, and feature modular systems from Electro-Comp, Doepfer and Akai (hell, even a stylophone and a Suzuki Omnichord show up); these were recorded at home in San Francisco, California and in the SnowGhost studio at Whitefish, Montana. But there are also completely unique, one-of-a-kind modular curios present, such as the “Coupigny” modular synthesizer housed in the INA/GRM studios at Radio France in Paris and used extensively by some of the titans of musique-concrete. Guest players invited to the party include living treasure of American jazz Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra (he plays the E.V.I. or Electronic Voice Instrument, a breath controlled oscillator, on “Mister Mouth”), Bay Area troublemakers Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly), East Coast electroacoustic sages Jay Lesser and Keith Fullerton Whitman, and classically trained pianist Sarah Cahill. Plus, our roll-call of the good and great would be remiss if we didn’t mention that the gatefold double vinyl and ITunes edition of the album also includes the bonus track “Hashish Master” that features a guest solo synth improvisation from none-other-than minimalist mastermind Terry Riley(!). Though it was recorded all over the world over the last two years, the whole shebang was finished in Baltimore, Maryland (the band’s new home, at least as long as Drew Daniel is a professor in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University), and comes encased in some truly gorgeous watercolor artwork by Robert Syrett.

To break it down: the album drops with a bumpin’ front end of four rhythmic workouts (perky, stomping, toe-tapping, and shuffling, respectively) that coach Perrey & Kingsley and 8-bit video game music and kitsch Latin Moogsploitation into some freaky positions. Then things take a classy European vacation in which the baroque composer Francois Couperin’s “Les Folies Francaises” is given the Wendy Carlos treatment. Then the band turn a corner into unexpected, ambitious new territory and things swell to a truly ridiculous/heroic climax. The jewel in the crown is the album’s title track, a 24 minute monster synth jam that builds from a lone Roland SH-101 wobbling your sub-woofers into a celestial, psychedelic epic whose spiraling arpeggios recall the sidelong LP-era mind-journeys of Cluster, Mother Mallard and Vangelis. Riding an insistent tabla pattern courtesy of a “Taal Mala” drum machine from India, warm, bubbling layers of analogue synthesis, and the chattering and chirping of MAX patches shaking hands with boutique EFX pedals, it’s a long strange trip indeed. Things cool down with an ambient air kiss and it’s over.

We know you’re probably shaking your head and thinking to yourself, “an electronic band makes an all-electronic album? These guys must be CRAZY.” And you’d be right. Consider this revenge for all those Queen records whose liner notes said “And nobody played the synthesizer!”, and a sweet surprise from a truly unpredictable American band.

first plaid and now matmos

thanks for the awesome news

  The Vidiot said:

The jewel in the crown is the album’s title track, a 24 minute monster synth jam that builds from a lone Roland SH-101 wobbling your sub-woofers into a celestial, psychedelic epic whose spiraling arpeggios recall the sidelong LP-era mind-journeys of Cluster, Mother Mallard and Vangelis. Riding an insistent tabla pattern courtesy of a “Taal Mala” drum machine from India, warm, bubbling layers of analogue synthesis, and the chattering and chirping of MAX patches shaking hands with boutique EFX pedals, it’s a long strange trip indeed. Things cool down with an ambient air kiss and it’s over.

Whoa baby!

niice

saw some of these tracks live last month and they are psychodelic

the terry riley cameo makes perfect sense

hell yeah! :heart:

  The Vidiot said:

amplified semen

roflupagus

:heart: matmos :heart:

sweet. now if Drew would only release some more soft pink truth stuff...

  tht! tne said:

  The Vidiot said:

amplified semen

 

roflupagus

that was the rose has teeth in the mouth siudfhuish

cool i like matmos

I've been interested in Matmos since I saw them perform with Bjork on the Live at the Royal Opera House DVD.

Do you recommend that I begin with an album in particular? I don't own any of there work.

  Dementia said:

I've been interested in Matmos since I saw them perform with Bjork on the Live at the Royal Opera House DVD.

 

Do you recommend that I begin with an album in particular? I don't own any of there work.

Honestly i think the most recent one (before Balloon) "The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast" gives the most bang for the buck for Matmos n00bs

holy shit. exciting news!!

yyyeeeeehhhaaaaawww!!!

  Anchio Arch io Son Pittore said:

yyyeeeeehhhaaaaawww!!!

oh great, now I gotta go play bogdan's latest album.

  taphead said:

http://www.matadorrecords.com/mpeg/matmos/...ainbow_flag.mp3

that track is in the new album?

yeah matador always seem to put an mp3 from the latest matmos album up when they're announced. I got that one from the matador blog in a post with the press release quoted in the first post.

great! sounds good, i like it

YEAH I CAN'T WAIT!!! :exciting: :angry:

i like it reminds me of katamari, im just a little fearful they will do a lot of spoken word stuff like they did on the last lp.

it is literally the only matmos lp i cannot listen to .

goddamit Jon! why arent you doing any solo music, i only see the name Wobbly mentioned now when a new matmos album comes out, its killin me

  goodwillsidis said:

  Dementia said:

I've been interested in Matmos since I saw them perform with Bjork on the Live at the Royal Opera House DVD.

 

Do you recommend that I begin with an album in particular? I don't own any of there work.

 

Honestly i think the most recent one (before Balloon) "The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast" gives the most bang for the buck for Matmos n00bs

i have to kindly disagree, The Rose has teeth in the mouth of the beast comes off as a very artsy fartsy spoken word beat nick experimental CD with a lot of sampled old rock smuic something akin to Nurse with Wound Who Can i Turn To Stereo. If you can handle heavy doses of spoken word and Vagina monologue esque sexual poetry then by all means check it out. It is by far my least favorite matmos cd and is not indicititive at all of how good their previous music sounds. I recommend 'Civil Wa'r or 'A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure'

theres just those two tracks on rose with the sort of spoken word stuff you're complaining about. and one of them has a cow vagina bagpipe. I dunno, I just think you're overreacting. That one joe meek track doesn't sound like nurse with wound at all.

Civil War is still the best though, yeah.

Oh and re: "im just a little fearful they will do a lot of spoken word stuff like they did on the last lp", this is the all synthesizer album. They're claiming that no microphones were used in the recording process whatsoever.

Oh, had no idea the they were on Matador.

Civil War's the one Matmos album I really adore.

This one sounds rather intriguing.