The lights are dimmed in the art gallery that has been outfitted for live performance. The place is packed to the brim with people standing attentively, silent, as a pair of men in the centre of the room, hunched over two tables filled to the edges with jars, bowls, tines, metal pipes, whistles, laptops, and an analogue mixer, make sounds that, until now, have never been heard. One of the men coaxes vibrations from the seemingly random assortment of objects. He taps rhythmically, swirls liquids, vocalizes, and performs, while his counterpart manipulates, samples, stretches, and loops. Nothing is perfect; sometimes a sound goes unsampled, a loop is missed, objects and computers protest against their interlocutors. Things do not always go as planned. And yet, the results are hypnotizing. The tools yield to the mastery of the duo, while intricate rhythms, builds, drops, stasis, movement, and energy coalesce from the objects and pour out of the speakers. This is Matmos in their element: resourceful music-making with limitations.
Five hours earlier, the same room was empty—except for the tables, two suitcases full of objects, the duo, and me. Drew Daniel plugs in a U.S. power strip, and, in that kind of uncanny, instantaneous-electricity way, the lights in the venue click off. The breakers have been tripped. “Is it too much power?” I had been coordinating and planning logistics for two weeks in order to bring the music of Matmos to Oxford, and now that endeavour was in jeopardy. The breakers are reset, and the plug reinserted, but the result is the same. Things do not always go as planned. The duo seems unfazed; they have been in this situation before. “Alright, let’s try this one.” A different power strip is substituted, and the lights stay on.
Matmos is a Baltimore-based electronic music duo of Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt. Matmos is resourceful. They work within limitations deftly and with a calm, magnetic style. They might, for example, limit themselves to working only with sounds created by plastic, resulting in their bright and bouncy album Plastic Anniversary. Or maybe they decide that all they need to make music is their washing machine, giving us the broodingly atmospheric and alien-sounding Ultimate Care II. Through these projects and all other Matmos releases, there is a common rhythmic thread. They chop, loop, and shift sampled sounds to create tracks with the spirit of techno legend Jeff Mills and the sonic palette of musique concrète icons Halim El-Dabh or Pierre Schaeffer. A Matmos album will often make you want to dance and groove along while the back of your mind asks, “Is this kick sound really a kick? Or is it someone striking the side of the washing machine?” Matmos is dance, rock, pop, and ambient music forged from the hidden sounds of the everyday world.
They treated the Oxford audience to a mesmerizing set of live-sampled, energetic music that evening. At times their performance sounded like a kick-driven club classic, and at others it was spacious, the entire audience holding their breath and listening intently to minute changes in the sound of a glass jar full of water being turned upside down. Much of what they played was improvised and not at all related to their newest album, Return to Archive. It was only after their performance that I realized their resourcefulness would have been undeterred by any power snafu. I was chatting with Martin as we tore down, and he told me about a time when plugging in their setup resulted in the loss of power not only to the venue they were in, but to the entire Venetian Island on which they were meant to perform. The power could not be restored that night, so Drew played acoustic and Martin served drinks performatively. The Italian crowd loved it. Resourcefulness indeed.
This resourcefulness is on full display on Return to Archive, the duo’s 2023 release, where they challenged themselves to make music using only the sounds present in the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings archive. This legendary archive is home to over 4000 albums consisting of folk music, field recordings, esoteric sound experiments, and other rarely heard corners of the recorded world. The duo limited themselves to a modest selection of a dozen records, many of which were in their personal record collection even before Smithsonian Folkways asked them to take on this project. Some of the most noteworthy sounds on the record come from albums such as Sounds of North American Frogs, Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments in Extension of Human Vocal Range, Sounds and the Ultra-Sounds of the Bottle-Nose Dolphin, Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, and Ionosphere. Return to Archive is an intriguing and captivating listen without any prior knowledge of the origins of Matmos’s samples, but when one is familiar with the source material, the album becomes an addictive sonic treasure hunt. However, at no point on the album does Matmos rely on the sonic novelty of their sources to carry the listener’s interest. On every track, you can hear the duo shaping, layering, juxtaposing, and moulding the sounds to fit their vision. The sonic origins are preserved, but the result is wholly unique and well-crafted. It is a beautiful and engaging balance of composition and preservation. From the first track to the last, you can hear them playing with the material of the archive and searching for ways to show the listeners new perspectives on old material. As a result, we return to the archive with fresh ears and curious minds.
“Good Morning Electronics” begins the album, and the duo’s resourcefulness takes centre stage. Fragments of disparate sound sources (from frogs to the sounds of office work) are interlocked into one continuous rhythmic melody. This track is like a meticulously crafted overture; it introduces the listener to sounds that will be explored later in the album. If you have never heard Matmos before, this track is a perfect introduction to what makes their music so special. The duo has a well-refined practice of identifying rhythmically and timbrally stimulating moments from limited source material and combining these sound fragments in ways that highlight the unique qualities of the sounds.
The introductory sampling of sounds in “Good Morning Electronics” gives way to the more substantial “Injection Basic Sound.” Here we can hear all the elements that one would desire in a classic techno track. There is a dark bassline, driving hi-hat, fleeting snare, and bubbling synth instrumental. Except that there are actually none of these things. All of these sounds, the building blocks of electronic dance music, are actually carefully manipulated samples from the record Speech After the Removal of the Larynx. The alien vocal sounds present in this source material become the driving rhythmic force of “Injection Basic Sound.” This is a prime example of Matmos as electronic dance music made with the sounds of musique concrète. “Mud-Dauber Wasp” takes this idea a step further into the brutal and noisy. This is industrial techno music made with wasp noises. Insect sounds are looped, layered, reversed, and turned into gritty basses and fluid synths. Compare “Mud-Dauber Wasp” to a paragon of industrial 1990s techno: “Rotation” by Final Cut. “Rotation” represents everything one could want from this genre; it is harsh, relentless, metallic, and driving. “Mud-Dauber Wasp,” building on this tradition, sounds like a winged insect got caught in a steel mill.
“Music or Noise?” “Why” and “Lend Me Your Ears” round out the first half of this album. Each of these tracks develops the duo’s rhythmic approach present in the first three tracks of the album, resulting in detailed and intricate compositions with plenty to pique a listener’s curiosity. At this point, Matmos has demonstrated their resourcefulness, but these first six tracks also illustrate another point about this album and the duo’s work in general. Matmos is conceptual art, and it is through their concepts that their resourcefulness thrives. The concept of Return to Archive is clear: it is an album made using only the sounds from the Smithsonian Folkways Archive. But the nature of this presents its own limitations, one of them being audio quality. Most of the recordings Matmos used were made in the 1960s and 1970s, and thus the recording quality is “lo-fi” by today’s pristine digital standards. So rather than work to make this material sound “clean” or “modern,” the duo leans into these qualities that are often deemed undesirable. With help from Evicshen, another artist who is familiar with highlighting the limitations of their chosen medium, Matmos fills the track “Why?” with pops, crackles, and noisy loops, reminding a listener that they are hearing a new creation with roots in the old. This is a classic Matmos technique: highlight the flaws so that they become the perfections.
The titular track announces a drastic departure in tone from all that has come before on this record. While each track on the first half featured a consistent pulse and danceable rhythms, this second half allows for timelessness and room to breathe. “Return to Archive” calls back to “Mud-Dauber Wasp” with the unmistakable buzzing sound of an insect, and it seems like we are in for another instance of bug-techno, until a gunshot sound erases our winged friend from the sonic palette. The gunshots give way to mechanical whirring and noisy drones, which swell into more gunshot moments. It feels like there is a story here, a mystery, a concept. A voice appears out of nowhere, some meaningless code, adding to the narrative, but not in a way we can understand. A doorbell rings. There is no answer. Frogs? The spaciousness of this track lets the listener appreciate the Archive for exactly what it is: noise, music, sound, a snapshot in time, a memory of our existence. This surreal moment is followed by a brief exploration of noisy perception. The listener is asked to imagine “The Way Japanese Beetles Sound to a Rose,” and the track unfolds a short chaotic sound world full of insect loops and filter sweeps. “Going to Sleep,” the final entry in the track list, features the most breathtaking moment of contrast on the whole record. Rhythmic animal sounds give way to a soothing voice that lulls us to sleep, only to be overtaken by a powerful, warm, noisy, sonic wave. The track winds down once more, bringing the album to a somnolent close.
At times danceable and intricate, at times droning and pensive, Return to Archive shows us the full range of Matmos’s ability to construct detailed and compelling experiences from a limited set of materials. The record demonstrates the duo’s iconic resourcefulness and conceptual dedication, rendering a tight fit within the rest of the Matmos catalogue. Each song feels like a complete story, sharing with the listener something important about its source material. Whether they are twisting wasp samples into techno music, collaging frog sounds into a danceable beat, or playing an accidentally acoustic show in Italy, Matmos makes the most of what they have. Things might not always go as planned, no archive is perfect, but with a spirit of resourcefulness, Matmos will continue to compose their situations into vibrant musical journeys. If you have ever heard insect noises and thought they sounded strangely melodic, or if you enjoy dance music or experimental music, Return to Archive is an album you do not want to miss.
