#with tempo changes (its very difficult to catch onto without knowing) and also i tried to find a way to represent the theme of the lyrics

[jesterwaves]

i got sick so i did another go! child cover with an old transcription i probably started when the song was first released. song is tranquil from their album the masquerade

#my music #go! child #go child #i tried to go beyond with the good morning cover but i couldnt think of much to do for this one so i experimented a bit #with tempo changes (its very difficult to catch onto without knowing) and also i tried to find a way to represent the theme of the lyrics #since i dont sing and it loses that meaning #returning to this style is nice maybe ill go back to composing in it someday #anyways the bitcrusher maybe was a bit too much by the end but i tried to fix it and made it worse so i just used the original version #as soon as i learned the cool fucked up sounds i could make ive been dying to try it #i like the fucked up sounds. but i feel like anyone thats not me will hate it. #im very particular about bitcrushing too sometimes. sometimes hearing it makes me want to rip my headphones off depending on like... #anyways time for deep jesterwave lore. i drew a piece inspired by this song that is MOSTLY lost to time #i thought it was gone but then i remembered ryan put it in the masquerade teaser video. so that painting exists ONLY in that video now #i wont say which one >_< but its there. painted with my first drawing tablet. #repaint when? lol. maybe.

[kforourke]

The Whole Village: Matmos’s “The Consuming Flame”

Full disclosure: I have a long history with Matmos’s music, so this review, assuming you can even call it a “review,” and not just a “piece,” will be colored by that history. Aside from listening to Matmos’s work for two decades now (!), I’ve written about them numerous times: Matmos’s music shows up in my book As If Seen at an Angle, and I reviewed both their last record, Plastic Anniversary, and Drew Daniel’s most recent The Soft Pink Truth record, Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?, for Michigan Quarterly Review. I am the sort of fan for whom long association with the thing I’m a fan of has complicated my relationship with that thing.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached their newest album, The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form.

When I interviewed Drew Daniel for my MQR TSPT piece in the spring, he briefly told me about the album and I was fascinated: it’s a collaborative, composite record, based on the work of 99 artists playing music at 99 beats per minute. It’s also long.

Here’s Thrill Jockey’s official description:

99 different musicians were asked to contribute to the recording with only one instruction: they could play anything that they wanted, but the tempo of any rhythmic material had to be set at 99 beats per minute. The resulting album is a three-hour long assemblage that travels across a shifting kaleidoscope of genre, mood and density, all synchronized to a constant underlying tempo.

There’s just so much to this record, but of course there is: how else could the work of 99 artists fit onto an album? The record runs nearly three hours, and the digital version of the album comprises 44 tracks; the CD version is split into three giant songs that are as long as whole albums on their own.

The sheer size of The Consuming Flame makes it nigh-impossible to review as a whole. Ideally, before writing a review of any album, I’ll listen to it a number of times, and will try to do as little as possible while listening to it during at least one of those times. But sitting still, listening to a three-hour record while doing little else is hard, and not just because there aren’t enough hours in the day for everything I need to do. Three hours is a long time! It’s hard to do anything for three hours!

Nonetheless, I listened to the record multiple times during the course of this writing-and-researching period, but rarely in toto: I’d listen for half and hour here, and hour and change there, et cetera; listening to this record was like catching parts of a beloved movie on television, over and over. For example, as I wrote the previous sentence, I was listening to track #39, “Out of the Serpent’s Mouth,” one of the album’s collaborations with Oneohtrix Point Never (another musician I’ve written about). The song sounds very much like it’s a collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never, insofar as a vague techy dread—akin to the nightclub scene in The Terminator, with the apropos words TECH-NOIR flashing in the background—suffuses the song.

Aside from the OPN tracks (#s 39 & 40), few songs’ collaborators are listed, either because Matmos changed the source material so much, or because of rights issues, or whatever. There’s one (listed) Mouse on Mars track, “It Isn’t Necessarily the Case,“ one with Yo La Tengo, one with clipping., etc. It’s therefore hard to tell, at least without referencing the collaborator chart above (high-res link here), who the other artists are on the record. But this is of a piece with Matmos’s work; even if one knows that A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure (to cite perhaps their best-known record) was recorded with surgical sounds, discerning those sounds is difficult.

Then there’s the sheer size and length of the record, its depth and breadth, which I hate to focus on overmuch but it’s there, like an elephant in a room, akin to how Mount Rainier looms over the Puget Sound like the area’s doom. That the record contains multitudes, and that those multitudes aren’t organized in clear movements or parts—for example, last night I watched the 1966 film Khartoum, which has an overture (!), an intermission, and exit music—complicates any overall discussion of the record. There’s just too much there to easily wrap one’s arms around.

Which is not to say that The Consuming Flame is overstuffed; it isn’t. I mean, it is, but not to the album’s detriment. There’s so much that’s excellent and nothing that’s poor. The album is populated, and not sparsely, with high moments of excitement and surprise; it leapfrogs genres liberally. Its only failing might be that it tries to do so much, and for so long, that the album can be a bit exhausting. Matmos’ body of work tends not to skew relaxing or easy, and The Consuming Flame is true to that. It is a largely maximalist record, even when it’s being quiet. The record’s maximalism only sleeps.

And in case the point isn’t yet clear, this is a Matmos record, and Matmos is anything but intentional. A group that’s been making electronic musique concrete for over two decades doesn’t make an overwhelming three-hour record accidentally. That it’s overwhelming, that it’s such a large collaboration, and that both things happened in 2020 of all years, nah, not accidental at all.

I’ll end with quote from the record’s funniest track, “Platformalism”:

when there’s no more culture, we can finally all be the same

it’s like I take a chainsaw to your family tree

look at yourself, it’s like everybody’s got a point of view

point of view

barbecue

don’t know much about topography

but I know where I belong

on a budget holiday with you

is that so wrong?

(cue goofy music followed by ten seconds of oppressive noise)

...

Images via Thrilljockey.

P.S.

Below, a bonus hour+ video of Matmos performing live “at” The Bemis Center! You won’t be disappointed. I watched this with my son, who is seven, and he thought it was hilarious and mesmerizing and has since continued to ask me to play Matmos for him. Cool kid.

#matmos #record reviews #thrill jockey #electronic music #baltimore