Matmos

Matmos
Thursday, June 29, 8:30 pm
Location: Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, 4235 19th St @ Collingwood
Tickets: $10, Qcc

The National Queer Arts Festival is pleased to present Matmos in an evening of free improvisation and electronic music intertwined with video.

Matmos’ debut CD took the electronic scene by surprise, garnering rave reviews both at home (features in The SF Guardian; a cover story in The Chronicle) across the U.S. (five stars in Alternative Press) and abroad, with the influential UK magazine The WIRE describing it as “entering electronics Valhalla” and listing it as one of the best electronic CDs of 1997. That year Matmos remixed the Ground Zero project of Japanese noise artist Otomo Yoshihide and, in addition to producing the soundtrack music for pin ball machines and hard core porno films, a selection from their debut CD was choreographed by the Scapino Ballet of Rotterdam (known for their recent collaborations with John Cale).

Their second CD Quasi-Objects further spread the word, reaching the ears of SPIN magazine and Bjork, who commisioned the group to remix her single, “Alarm Call”. In the fall of ’98 the group added a spin to their sound through a collaboration with a diverse number of musicians and friends including current or former members of outfits such as Aerial M, Tortoise, Acetone, The Radar Brothers, The For Carnation, Cul de Sac, and Amber Asylum. The result was their latest release, The West, a bizarre electronic take on country, rock, and folk instrumentation which made it into The WIRE’s top 50 releases of 1999. Having just remixed Labradford, Richie Coleman Devine, Pluramon, Slicker, and Sutekh, the band are currently collaborating with Bjork on new material and planning a full length project based upon the sounds of medical technology. For more info: www.brainwashed.com/matmos.