Matmos

A crafty and cerebral electronic-music duo with rare reach beyond electronic-music borders, Matmos makes shifty, glitchy soundscapes that limp and strut. The group famously used samplings of surgery and various other medical procedures (liposuction!) on 2001’s A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, and later focused on such things as 19th-century battlefield hymns and “sonic portraits” of luminaries like Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, and Patricia Highsmith. Having delved so deeply into weird, self-imposed challenges, the most radical thing to do was the complete opposite: The duo's latest album, 2008's Supreme Balloon, was composed solely of electronically produced sounds—no concepts, no found sound, just straightforward synths.

Updated 06/01/2010