Photos by Sarah Slater.
Call it what you will — music for films, or self-indulgent ramblings through home-built, impossibly complex contraptions of wire, capacitors and diodes — the electronic music genre continues to fascinate.
Sort of a sister-genre to the No Wave and noise genres popular in the ’70s and ’80s, electronic musicians carry on an obsessively self-indulgent lifestylem — reflected by the complexity in their oeuvre. These sound wizards exude a definitive avant-guard feel, as well as a strong affinity for Radio Shack, which attracts an interesting audience, to say the least.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that the crowd at show Tuesday night at was eclectic, although the majority looked like they’d popped in on the show after leaving a sci-fi or comic book convention. I fully expected to see “Tron Guy” — a recent Internet nerd-phenom — dancing around the floor at any time.
The rest of the audience were anywhere between young, soon-to-be-hipster CU students in their early twenties and balding film critic-types easily in their late fifties (a few of these with etheric-looking dates that they probably met in some sort of rave/techno/acid jazz party, then invited them to be a trophy). For a bit I felt I was watching the soundscapes unfold from within a German Expressionist painting by Otto Dix or George Grosz.
Supporting band for Matmos Tuesday night was , an ambient electronic project from Lexington, Ken., and brainchild of Jason Corder. Sitting on either side of a low table — one of two on stage for both bands — surrounded by mixing boards, laptops (a total of six, by my count), synthesizers and loads of wire and a few musical instruments, Corder and his counterparts weaved a tapestry of ambient electronics, while four artists painted on two eight-foot-tall canvasses behind them. Above, a small video screen broadcast a constant stream of children’s book-styled text illustrations in digital decoupage. The set blended into one long piece, with barely perceptible transitions between the songs, for nearly an hour.
The painting on the two canvases turned out to be a beautifully colorful scene of a high-flying balloon, no doubt in honor of Matmos’ current album, “The Supreme Balloon.” This type of ambient noise/music, from early 20th century compositions by Erik Satie through the modern version we’re more familiar with now (made popular by Brian Eno in the late ’70s), continues to grow in influence and popularity across the U.S. and European music landscape.
The genre enjoys a sustained evolution, powered by endless development of electronic gadgetry and a constant stream electricians-cum-musicians. These gadgeteers that find themselves obsessed with manipulating sounds, sampling, remixing, re-recording, sequencing, and finally playing compositions designe merely to accentuate an atmosphere, or create a mood.
In contrast to offthesky, Matmos’ music is more traditionally song-oriented and contains more recognizable beginnings, middles and ends. For average listeners, however, the tradition would end there. Composed of Martin (M.C.) Smith and Drew Daniel — and Tuesday night with accompaniment by J Lesser — Matmos is known for fairly extreme electronic experimentation, including the use of samples of such seemingly mundane (and yet, when you think about it, truly fascinating) things as neural activity of crayfish, Bible pages turning, contact mics on human hair, and the sounds of a frozen stream thawing in the sun.
The boys stirred up a bit of news with the 2001 release of “A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure,” which was made up primarily of samples of the many sounds of surgeries — including plastic surgery, bonesaws and liposuction — sampled, sequenced and remixed into a surprisingly accessible group of intriguing compositions. Matmos also worked with Bjork on 2001’s “Vespertine” and 2004’s “Medulla,” adding to their renown, and recently spent 97 hours as artists in residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, performing with friends and onlookers.
The duo’s latest recording is a collection of sound sculptures based on a self-imposed requirement that all sounds originate only from synthesizers and that no microphones be used in the recordings at any point. The duo also points out to listeners that this album is “sincerely intended to give delight to the listener.” Live, delight does come across well to the crowd throughout the set — that is, until the crowd’s attention span has been saturated…
Talk about self-indulgence — a cornerstone of the electronic musician’s art. Matmos toyed with the audience on Tuesday, masterfully mixing the visual with the aural in their second piece. Drew Daniel bounced around his table like an animated mad scientist leaning over his mixing boards, laptops and synths and frantically grabbing, mixing, and manipulating sounds.
M.C. Smith sat at his table fingering his synth, and then strumming, scratching and hitting the strings on his guitar. Over their heads played a black and white video of a young blonde Adonis-looking character, masturbating in a hot tub. The juxtaposition of the imagery and stage antics was fitting while maintaining a certain awkward feeling. Surprise! It’s one of the moods this genre often seeks to create, or accentuate.
The duo followed up with equally interesting and catching pieces, although none had quite the same visual impact, for just over an hour. Each was unique in style and elicited various moods, and yet most of the audience were entranced and dancing much of the time. The overall vibe they created was one of comfortable intimacy that would be hard to recreate with a typical rock show.
The drawback of the show was a product of that intimacy toward the last 20 minutes. Sadly, a large part of the audience was by then milling about and talking — quite loudly — until their conversational volume nearly offset some of the sound coming from the stage. It became increasingly hard to remain entranced while these conversations were happening. Perhaps the crowd had reached a state of aural (or alcoholic?) saturation. Aside from this outcome, Matmos played a masterful set, exhibiting their complex skills and artistic ingenuity.
Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer and Reverb contributor.
Sarah Slater is a Denver-based Reverb contributor.
