Throughout their 30-year career, Baltimore-based experimental electronic music couple Matmos have gained notoriety for their unconventional use of sampling. Across 14 albums, dating back to their 1997 self-titled debut, M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel have, amongst other things, recorded the sounds of surgical procedures, washing machines and freshly cut hair to create various forms of melodic techno, glitch, IDM and post-industrial music.
For their latest album, Return to Archive, the duo was commissioned by the Smithsonian Folkways record label to record an album in honour of its 75th anniversary. Founded in 1948 by Moses Asch, Folkway’s self-proclaimed mandate was to record the sounds of the entire world and commit them to vinyl. Thus, in their typically unique way, Matmos re-contextualise the sound of American frogs, dolphins, satellites, junkyards and the mud-dauber wasp, inviting the age-old musique concrète question – is this music or noise?
