Here’s the first thing to know: The album—all of it, every sound on its single 40-minute track—is played on a Whirlpool Ultimate Care II washing machine. The second thing you need to know is that Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel, who’ve recorded a series of brainy, witty sample-and-sound compositions under the sobriquet Matmos over nearly two decades, understand with total clarity what a gimmicky project this might sound like, on the merits. But Ultimate Care II was designed from the start to be a less weighty composition than many other Matmos projects—like A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, which used sound samples from surgery clinics as its building blocks, or The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast, whose songs are each dedicated to a gay public figure, often of some controversy—that inspired the duo in some way. Schmidt and Daniel will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Matmos feature.
Schmidt: Moebius was one of the great graphic artists of the last 100 years teamed with the evil perverted writing power of Alejandro Jodorowsky (I don’t have to explain him, right?). This, for me is the UR-comic book, you can have your damn Spider Boy and Superman. This is dystopian science fiction at it’s best, most confusing and fashion forward. When a person has their clothes ripped off by androids, they have genitals, they have nipples! Like people actually do. None of this namby-pamby American Protestant shame comics. Nipple-having murderous dog-faced space opera. Actual beautiful art, rather than blurry glags printed on paper made of old toilet rolls. Single panels of Moebius’ work have lightened whole weeks of life for me. Finally released in the United States (OK, I don’t really know the history of this, but I’ve been casually looking for a long time) on Humanoids Press. They make you pay for it, and plenty, but it’s worth it. Moebius. There’s also a store/gallery of his work in Paris, if you happen to find yourself there. It’s called Stardom. Good luck.
