Matmos haven’t released an album in four years but they have been busy preparing the forthcoming ninth full-length one, The Marriage of The Minds.
The Baltimore via San Francisco duo of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel got us used to unusual sources and ways of creating music since they paired up nearly twenty years ago. Some of these include varied surgical procedures, contact microphones on human hair, human skulls, rat cages and an array of other weird sounding things which they manipulate and often compliment with instrumentation.
According to the press release, Matmos’ upcoming effort is conceptually based on telepathy. For the past four years, Schmidt and Daniel have been conducting parapsychological experiments using the Ganzfeld experiment, a technique used to test extrasensory perception on people. Here’s how the press release explains it:
“The band have been conducting parapsychological experiments based upon the classic Ganzfeld (“total field”) experiment, but with a twist: instead of sending and receiving simple graphic patterns, test subjects were put into a state of sensory deprivation by covering their eyes and listening to white noise on headphones, and then Matmos member Drew Daniel attempted to transmit “the concept of the new Matmos record” directly into their minds. During videotaped psychic experiments conducted at home in Baltimore and at Oxford University, test subjects were asked to describe out loud anything they saw or heard within their minds as Drew attempted transmission. The resulting transcripts became a kind of score that was then used by Matmos to generate music. If a subject hummed something, that became a melody; passing visual images suggested arrangement ideas, instruments, or raw materials for a collage; if a subject described an action, then the band members had to act out that out and make music out of the noises generated in the process of the re-enactment.”
The Marriage of the Minds will arrive early 2013 and ahead of it, Matmos will drop The Ganzfeld EP on October 15th in Europe and a day later in the US via their new label Thrill Jockey.
The Ganzfeld EP will be available in a limited deluxe edition that includes headphones and Ganzfeld goggles to “facilitate the recreation of the exact perceptual circumstances of the original test subjects who participated in the Ganzfeld experiment” as the label puts it. You can pre-order it now here.
Matmos have unveiled the first astounding track from the EP, ‘Very Large Green Triangles (Edit)’. I have been listening to it over and over, and cannot wait to hear the longer version. Listen and download it free below.
