After digging into the sounds of plastic surgery (A Chance To Cut is a Chance To Cure), making music with civil war memorabilia (Civil War) and painting sonic portraits of a bunch of famous folks (The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast), San Franciscan avant electronic duo Matmos are apparently taking a well earned conceptual holiday. Yeah right. Sure not a microphone was touched, and nothing from the outside world was sampled, but the problem is that these guys can’ help themselves, Supreme Balloon is a synth fetishists dream. Every possible synth they could get their hands on, including an obscure GRM based one in France, is used here, but forget the dour earnestness of the musique concrete crowd, the sounds that this duo conjure up verge on sexual. Or at the very least exploitation. They have lovingly crafted these highly synthetic sounds, worshipping at the temple of synth, joyfully fiddling with the parameters, fondling the pitch, nudging attack and self consciously stroking the oscillators. It’s hilarious, their palette at times draws upon those late seventies electronic gurus, Your Tangerine Dream’, your Tomita’, Wendy Carlos even Jean Michael Jarre, yet their techniques are very much 2008 and pretty damn funky. They’ve been assisted here by regulars Jay Lesser, Keith Fullerton Whitman and strangely enough Sun Ra Arkestra guru Marshall Allen. This however is the sound of the duo having fun, sure they’ve gone overboard coaxing up some incredibly ridiculous and outlandish synth sounds at a time where everyone seems to want to tone down the machine elements, but the pieces are incredible, particularly the 24 minute title track harking back to a better time when good honest folks like Vangelis and Rick Wakeman ruled the world.
Bob Baker Fish
