On Tue, 2 May 2000, Michael Shepherd wrote:
quoted 21 lines on 5/2/00 5:59 AM, Andrew Schrock at aschrock@cs.brandeis.edu wrote:> on 5/2/00 5:59 AM, Andrew Schrock at aschrock@cs.brandeis.edu wrote:
>
> > I think the Matmos vague terrian #0 album is now fairly hard to find, I
> > think it went OOP 6 months ago maybe? It has a fantastic 18-minute track
> > (#3) which has some seriously amazing progression, and of course more
> > tracks made with balloons, farts, mumbles, and so forth.
> >
> > "Quasi-objects" (vague terrain #1) should still be available and contains
> > much of the same type of material. Both are pretty essential US-IDMish
> > releases IMO. Some of the tracks of these two albums still don't fail to
> > blow my mind.
>
> Wait a second...
>
> Not trying to be contrary here, but I thought #0 and quasi-objects were
> quite dissimilar. "#0" was very cold, metallic, dark, clicking, and
> autechre-ish with absolutely no use of the balloons, farting, etc that you
> here on Quasi-objects. By contrast, Quasi-objects seemed more organic and
> warmer and used the sounds of balloons, farting, voices, etc. I think
> Quasi-objects really established Matmos as unique and apart from all the
> other Autechre sound-a-likes.
You're right about the samples, they retain the same aesthetic
tho. I slipped for a bit, I hadn't listened to vague0 in quite some time
and mixed up which tracks were from which album. Now that my bungling has
been pointed out, I might as well patch it up:
As Michael mentioned, Quasi- uses a lot of more straight electronic
samples and "traditional" samples (as well as real DRUM sounds) there's
the same amount of sample fuckery going on in both. (track 5, "this
is..." on vague0 would be equally at home on either album with its guitar
weirdness)
Regardless: they're masters at composing micro-symphonies of
"knowable" sounds and feeding them back to you so that you have no idea
what the 'ell is going on. They display very raw samples inside of their
songs, but you still have trouble hearing what's going on.
Random note: got the new Pole 12" today (the yellow sleeve-d one). It's
faster, 4/4, and much more chain reaction influenced than you might
expect. Same Pole, new take on it. Which is good, I don't think I could
stomach another "1" or "2".
Andrew
--
-| Andrew Schrock | aschrock@cs.brandeis.edu |-
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