The two sound fetishists of the celebrated sampling duo Matmos hit Copenhagen this Summer with their new album: A sound portrait of polymath Bogusław Schaeffer, taking us from the utopian 1960s Polish avant-garde to the contemporary dystopian cultural moment through a wreck of modernist composition, sixties tape music, seventies dub, industrial music, postrock and dark ambient. Max Eilbacher is playing a support set.

Please note: This show is sadly canceled as one of the members have been infected with COVID.

Matmos
No sound seems unuseful to the celebrated electronic duo Matmos aka M.C. Schmidt og Drew Daniel, who besides their music are also a couple. The duo, who for almost three decades have built their music on sampling of everyday sounds with equally bizarre humor, avantgardistic collage and a queer view on society, always approach their work with thoroughness, subtlety and consistency. Who else manages to create danceable music from the sounds of plastic surgery, as they notoriously did on the masterpiece  ‘A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure’ (2001)? Or who else would bring an old washing machine on an entire tour, creating an amazing concert out of a washing programme, as they did at Jazzhouse in 2016? Also their performance of “Plastic Anniversary” at CC presented by ALICE in 2019 was impressive.

On their new album “Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer”, Matmos focus on Polish polymath Bogusław Schaeffer Celebrated in his native land but not widely known beyond, Schaeffer innovated for decades across the boundaries of classical composition, electronic experimentation, and radical theater in playfully form breaking ways. At the suggestion of Michal Mendyk of the Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza in Warsaw, Matmos were given access to the entire catalog of Schaeffer’s recorded works to use as they saw fit. Neither performances nor remixes, the resulting encounters between past and present take tissue samples of DNA from past compositions and mutate them into entirely new organisms that throb with an alien vitality. What emerges across this suite of eight new songs is a composite portrait of the utopian 1960s Polish avant-garde and the contemporary dystopian cultural moment regarding each other across a distance. Offering a “life review” of production styles, “Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer” builds temporary shelters out of the panoramic wreckage of modernist composition, sixties tape music, seventies dub, industrial music, nineties post rock, dark ambient and more.

We can’t wait to see what Matmos has got in store as ALICE presents the sampling duo at Valby Kulturhus this Summer.

Max Eilbacher
Max Eilbacher is an intermedia artist from Baltimore Maryland, based in Berlin. He studied computer music and cinematic arts while maintaining an active touring schedule. With a number of different groups and projects, he works with conceptual and intuitive compositional systems that square the circle of the raw moment and the controlled display of an outcome. He has presented works in various galleries, clubs, museums, and basements all across North America, Europe, and Japan.

Note: This concert takes place at Valby Kulturhus and is part of ALICE’s membership programme.