Trying to describe Matmos’ set last night at the Masonic Lodge of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery – actually the perfect atypical place for their atypical music – is like trying to write about the slime of evil liquid energy beneath the city Sogo in the Barbarella movie! Sorry, but that’s apparently where they got their moniker, and if I have seen this bubble-gum-sci-fi movie a long time ago, I can’t remember what it was about, but I vividly remember that Jane Fonda was damn hot… a little bit like yesterday night, the oddity and total weirdness of these two guys were beyond description, I had no idea what they were doing, but I enjoyed the cartoonish sonic ride.
Matmos is an experimental electronic duo, and they had a whole large table covered of laptops and other electronic equipment, but, just like a low-budget sci-fi movie, they also added a few tricks of their own, like blowing inside a bowl of water, or scratching a rubber balloon, ‘In a town full of professionals, we are from Baltimore’ said with humor M.C. Schmidt, who looked like a mad and old-fashioned scientist sitting at his working table. Wearing a suit, he was contrasting with Drew Daniel’s studded-black-leather-gay-pride outfit. In real life, it’s Daniel who is the assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, but for the night, it was Schmidt who had the professorial look, with a total goofy side and a great sense of humor.
They started with a stretched version of their ‘Very Large Green Triangles’, from their new album, ‘The Marriage of True Minds’, helped by a musician of the opening band, Horse Lords, sitting on a chair and humming indecipherable stuff then reciting over sidereal electronica. it lasted close to ten minutes before anything happened, building mystery and oddity. I thought I had plunged in the matrix or some incomprehensible dimension like a character in a Stanley Kubrick’s movie, then, all bells out, the macabre electronic dance-jam started, and the video behind them was showing flying green pyramids around skyscrapers, invading the city.
M.C. Schmidt simply said this was the result of their ‘psychic research’, which established that ‘a lot of people see green triangles’… Don’t ask me anything about the occult, but aren’t pyramids some kind of Masonic symbol? In this case, Matmos were exactly in the right place to perform.
Their set was full of surprises, beside the sounds produced by the electronic equipment displayed on the table and a few real instruments (electric guitar, drums, sax, clarinet,…), there were noises produced by some sucking/blowing water effects, cringing sounds generated by M.C. Schmidt’s nails on a rubber balloon, and strident and shrieking sounds produced by a mysterious box. It was very weird how they could jump from chaotic and disorganized collages of noises to the most familiar and repetitive dance-techno beats in a few seconds. They even covered a Buzzcocks’ song, ‘E.S.P.’, which they started with Daniel on screaming metal vocals,… They said it was a Buzzcocks cover when it was over, because I certainly didn’t recognize it at all, but I perceived some seemingly and surprising surf guitars at one point, like a wrecked piece of the totally torn-apart song.
I was completely taken by surprise by this electronic stuff enhanced by organic, concrete things, Matmos was transforming everything like some avant-garde sound-sculptors, playing around and mixing the ordinary (water, balloon) with the mainstream (techno music) and the totally bizarre. They also played ‘Aetheric Vehicle’, ‘Yield to Total Elation’, off their album ‘The Civil War’, and during their ‘Lipostudio… And So On’, we could see images of a stomach breathing, while listening to dance beats, clarinet notes, and sounds from a liposuction surgery? ‘It could have been one done in California’, I mean, this is what Schmidt said after he had finished making bubbles in his water bowl. This was turning way too weird for me. After an exotic number marrying bells, a jazzy sax, synth, a Indian/African vibe and images of Cleopatra, another one with a weird harp, xylophone sound and ocean noise suddenly turning like a country ballad, Daniel asked for their last song: ‘Lounge or Disco?’ Everyone screamed ‘disco’, and they played ‘Tunnel’ which sounded like a mind-fucking dance floor number, with a rubbery feeling ascending like a fast-driven projectile repetitively splashing all over the place. These Baltimore guys were total nuts, they reinvented order inside chaos and made my head spin like a weather vane. I left the place totally dizzy and I was not sure to find where I had parked my car.