Matmos: “Why?”

Why not? Who knows what inspires and motivates the experimental outfit Matmos out of Baltimore… Actually, we know. “[D]olphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers…” The artists are electronic maestros of found sound, looping sonic nuggets both banal and obscure into their techno bloodbaths. You need the backstory, so let’s just give it to you straight:

“In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album Return to Archive, which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways.”

Is the estate of Moses Asch getting royalties or what? How does this work?

Stream, share, buy to your heart’s content.

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