Matmos | Artist

Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo formed 1995 in San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore. The core members are M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, plus they include other artists on their records and in their performances, including notably J Lesser. The duo's sound is experimental electronics incorporating IDM, Glitch and Musique Concrète. They collaborated with Björk on several of her studio albums, including the superb Vespertine, and on her live tour. Matmos gained notoriety for their use of unconventional samples including "freshly cut hair" and "the amplified neural activity of crayfish" on their first album and "recorded the snips, clicks, snaps, and squelches of various surgical procedures, then nipped and tucked them into seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno" for their album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure. Outstanding studio albums by the duo include The West (1999), A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure (2001), The Civil War (2003), The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast (2006), Ultimate Care II (2016), Plastic Anniversary (2019), The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form (2020), and their most recent release Metallic Life Review (2025). The individual members of the duo also release solo works. Martin Schmidt has several experimental releases, featuing prepared piano, flute and electronics. Drew Daniel has also released albums with collaborator, the industrial-noise musician John Wiese. Schmidt and Daniel, who are a legally married couple, are also the founders of Vague Terrain Recordings, a label which was created to release soundtrack material for gay pornographic films. The band name "Matmos" refers to the lake of evil slime beneath the city of Sogo in the 1968 film "Barbarella".

Artist Website: vague-terrain.com

Featured Albums: Matmos

Related Artists: Wobbly, Bjork