The "soft pink truth" behind Drew Daniel's Matmos side project has always been more than a little psychosexual in nature. On the group's 2003 debut Do You Party?, it lurked in excitedly sleazy party jams like "Big Booty Bitches" and "Gender Studies," both of which drank from the veins of disco's sexy circulation. On the new Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?, the truth comes by way of songs about the clap and Jesus (who, by Daniel's estimation, was "a cock-sucking Jew from Galilee… just like me.")
Such a decree might surprise fans of Matmos, a cerebral electronic-music duo whose interaction with the body has been limited to the surgical sounds sampled on A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure. It proves even more surprising, though, on an album self-described as "A Comparative Analysis Of Ideological Positions In English Punk Rock And American Hardcore Songwriting." The conceptually tilted liner notes scream Matmos, but the sleek beats and slanted funkiness of Do You Want are pure Soft Pink Truth.
None of the new album reaches the gaudy peaks of Do You Party?, but it bumps just as well through subtle atmospheres and strange detours. The detours lie in the source material: All the songs here are covers of old punk acts like Crass, Die Kreuzen, Minor Threat, Swell Maps, and Angry Samoans. Some remain faithful to frustrated punk moods, while others take a sidelong leer at the interlaced messages. In "Out Of Step," Minor Threat's "don't drink, don't smoke, don't fuck" sentiment sounds dubiously upheld against a backdrop of sensual electro lurch. The same goes for the "quasi-parodic hate speech" in Angry Samoans' "Homo-Sexual," which traffics in noisy dance clack tightened to its breaking point. Tracks like "Media Friend/Vampire State Building" (written by the London hardcore band Rudimentary Peni) stand as highlights simply by letting grooves run their course unfettered, but Do You Want shows The Soft Pink Truth thinking through those grooves while also heeding their call.