Artwork by Alex Fregon

SYDNEY FESTIVAL: Wednesday January 15 – Matmos @ City Recital Hall, Angel Place. Doors 8pm. Tickets on sale October 28 from Ticketmaster. More info here.
SYDNEY FESTIVAL: Thursday, January 16 – The Soft Pink Truth DJ set @ Paradiso Lates, Paradiso Terrace Bar. The Soft Pink Truth is Drew Daniel (one half of Matmos)’s experimental house music side-project. Visit the festival website for up-to-date information. Free entry, starts 11.30pm.
MONA FOMA: Saturday, January 18 @ MAC Precinct – Macquarie Wharf Shed 2, Hunter Street, Hobart. Tickets & info here.
MELBOURNE: Sunday, January 19 @ Howler w/- Always, Andrew Tuttle + DJ Simon Winkler. Tickets on sale now.

Mistletone presents avant-garde electronic duo Matmos, bringing their live sonic experimentation and boundary-pushing sonic invention to Australia for the first time in their 15-year career.

Performing with joy and humour, Matmos experiment with noise to push the boundaries of pop music. Mining non-conventional sound sources and exploring bold ideas, Baltimore-based Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt have been producing music together since the mid-90s, delivering nine albums to date. Their latest release The Marriage of True Minds, based on experiments in telepathy, is an art object, a scientific report, a practical joke and a daring pop record.

Since forming in 1997, Matmos have released a dozen influential albums and have collaborated with Björk, Antony and the Johnsons, Liars, David Pajo, Oneohtrix Point Never, Terry Riley, & many others. Their live show features stunning visuals and uses the live stage as a looking glass for an audience into their current sonic palette.

Currently based in Baltimore, the duo formed in San Francisco in the mid 1990s, and self-released their debut album in 1997. Marrying the conceptual tactics and noisy textures of object-based musique concrete to a rhythmic matrix rooted in electronic pop music, the two quickly became known for their highly unusual sound sources: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, cigarettes, cards shuffling, laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions, balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones, Polish trains, insects, life support systems, inflatable blankets, rock salt, solid gold coins, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms, and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by the group’s large circle of friends and collaborators. The result is a model of electronic composition as a relational network that connects sources and outcomes together; information about the process of creation activates the listening experience, providing the listener with entry points into sometimes densely allusive, baroque recordings.

Since their debut, Matmos have released over eight albums, including: Quasi-Objects (1998) , The West (1998), A Chance to Cut Is A Chance to Cure (2001), The Civil War (2003)  and The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of A Beast (2006) and Supreme Balloon (2008). In 2001 they were asked to collaborate with the Icelandic singer Bjork on her Vespertine album, and subsequently embarked on two world tours as part of her band. In addition to musical collaborations with Antony, So Percussion, David Tibet, the Rachel’s, Lesser, Wobbly, Zeena Parkins, and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, Matmos have also collaborated with a wide range of artists across disciplines, from the visual artist Daria Martin (on the soundtrack to her film “Minotaur”) to the playwright Young Jean Lee (for her play “The Appeal”) to Berlin-based choreographer Ayman Harper. Most recently, they have been part of the ensemble for the Robert Wilson production “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic”, featuring Marina Abramovic, Antony and Willem Dafoe.

The most recent Matmos album, The Marriage of True Minds, was released in 2013 by Thrill Jockey Records and is available locally via Rocket Music.