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A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure

A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure

a review by Bill Tilland of
release format A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure by Matmos (CD Album)

text

On this new CD, the San Francisco techno duo of Andrew Daniel and Martin Schmidt has seemingly come of age, moving beyond the purely conceptual novelty of making music out of bizarre sampled sound sources.

Make no mistake however, the sampled sounds on this recording are as weird as any you're ever going to encounter on a techno recording. Most of them were recorded in operating rooms (!) and feature the highly processed and manipulated sonic byproducts of liposuction, laser eye surgery, various types of cosmetic plastic surgery, and so on. (Hence the CD title...)

However, the artistic attitude taken toward the samples is crucial. In earlier recordings, Matmos was criticized for a rather typical preoccupation with the sample itself, displaying an infatuation both with the technology and the manipulation of it, and forgetting that the listener is only connected to the product, not the process. But Matmos is no longer stuck on that level - at least not on this recording, from the sound of it - and what they've come up with is a damn fine slice of aberrant techno which doesn't require a knowledge of sound sources in order to impress.

The first track, 'lipostudio (and so on)' uses the squelchy, sucking sounds of the liposuction process to good effect, but complements them with some tasty synth work, a funky drum 'n' bass shuffle beat, silly vocal chirping and a languid electric guitar coda which has a melange of voices repeating the phrase "and so on." The freaky featured sample is not asked to carry more aesthetic weight (so to speak) than it can handle, and is not the "point" of the track.

The next track, 'L.a.s.i.k.', is built almost entirely around the sound of a cutting laser, and sounds like a chorus of angry, rhythmic bees, while 'Spondee' starts with a series of words pronounced by an audiologist, and adds related sound effects (the word "sunrise" triggers a crowing rooster, etc.), drum breaks, variable audio tones, riffs from a synth horn section, and other surprises. Each piece on the CD, in fact, seems to be built around the specific potential of its core sound(s).

The real tour de force from the perspective of pure sound manipulation is 'for felix (and all the rats),' a piece which uses only the bars of a rat's cage, which are alternately bowed, plucked and hammered. It is a mournful and musically convincing tribute to a dead pet, and like the other tracks in this diverse collection, it stands quite nicely on its own merits, regardless of means and materials. Posted by Bill Tilland at 00:00, 28 Mar 2001