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: OK, I only have a run of two … but I love them so much I thought I’d mention it. Here’s one: I don’t read or speak Chinese, so I have no idea what I’m buying, but I have been pretty lucky, I think. At the worst, it’s schmalzy strings playing … those scales (I’m not a musicologist, here folks, just a record buyer) at best, virtuoso instrumentalists playing bizarre beautiful sounds expertly on instruments I know nothing about and can only imagine … therefore amazing. I feel a little of the joy-in-ignorance that I guess imperialist fuckwits got out of “chinoiserie.” Oh. I am those imperialist fuckwits. Except … well, it’s a little different now … isn’t it? Isn’t it? Anyway amazing musicianship and recording quality.
