Matmos’ Drew Daniel has recently written a book about Throbbing Gristle’s ’20 Jazz Funk Greats’, which is more than likely one of the sources that this album draws inspiration from. There will come a time when someone writes a book about a Matmos album, but it probably won’t be this one.
That is not meant as a scathing remark at all. But this is their least conceptual work since their 1997 debut. Though their witty, inventive use of samples (liposuction, rats, animal pelt, bones, semen, teeth – you name it) shouldn’t be seen as a gimmick, there would be plenty to write about an album like ‘A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure’, for example. This album, though far from flat, feels a little un-Matmos-like. It looks to refocus attention squarely on the music, which itself snacks heartily on electronic pop’s staple diet: Cluster, Kraftwerk, disco, Jean-Jacques Perrey. There is a sort of naivety to it, after a decade of clicks’n’cuts and obsessively-detailed samples, but it is a bold naivety. It uses tingling electronica, Radiophonic Workshop bleeping and analogue whirrs, all played with a variety of light, dreamy and lush synthesizer textures.
The album was lovingly executed with a variety of different synths, and so it becomes a love letter to the instrument in some ways. That, then, is the concept, isn’t it? But where it could easily lapse into pastiche Daniel and his partner MC Schmidt are too savvy for anything to be considered disposable, even when they are at their poppiest. Highlights include ‘Exciter Lamp’, which recalls fellow travellers Mouse On Mars, and the clockwork melody of ‘Polychords’ which plays with the cliches of moog-driven Easy Listening. The title track is the only track that could be considered difficult listening, in fact, and that is only because it has an off-putting length. Several of it’s twenty-four minutes could have been edited out, but once it gets going it is excellent, involving and unpredictable. All told, it’s a strong electronic pop album, and it sounds positively footloose and fancy-free.
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