Austinist Album Review: Supreme Balloon by Matmos
Two years ago, Matmos astounded and amused listeners with a tenacious concept album with the mouthful of a title - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast. Taking eleven gay pop culture celebrities, the duo, M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, made an record using complex and interweaving field recordings and electronics to reflect upon subjects like writer/former junky William S. Burroughs, Valerie Solanas of SCUM Manifesto fame, and figures ranging from the heavyweight philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to grimy Germs frontman Darby Crash. The Rose… was utterly listenable but was perhaps more interesting in approach than anything else – how many albums in 2006 could boast samples of snails crawling on a Theremin, typewriters, and a cow’s vagina? Few, no doubt.
And how to follow such an overture? Well, if The Rose… was big on conception and scope, Matmos step back on their new record, Supreme Balloon, relishing in the freedom of Moog-driven minimalist dance and eschewing the Big Ideas they dove into on their last release in favor of something altogether more playful. To put it one way, Supreme Balloon sounds like a calypso party. Thrown by aliens. The cover art screams Yes, the synth-love symphonies are all kraut-rock, and the plinky tracks sound a little like the score from Toejam and Earl.
Of course, Matmos always have at least one of those Big Ideas at work: this isn’t just a synthesizer-heavy record, it’s based a challenge they posed to themselves to make an album of ALL synthesizers, utilizing the kind of old-school modules that make the Stereolab fetishist crowd wet themselves with glee. Six of the songs come in at under four minutes, stretching from the bouncy “Polychords” to the more sedate and ambient “Cloudhopper.” “Les Folies Francaises” would sit right at home on Wendy Carlos’ “Bach meets Moog” soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange, and “Rainbow Flag” is a colorful slice of glitchy electro-pop. Were it not for the title track, Supreme Balloon could have been a very short, easy-to-digest work of electronic instrumentals. But that’s just not Matmos’ way. “Supreme Balloon” comes in at just over twenty-four minutes, and with its length and mood fluctuations is very clearly the album’s centerpiece. Building slowly with both growls and twitchy high register notes, the song grows just to strip down again, bubbling over with weird sonic burps and undulations. It’s an ambitious journey to step into “Supreme Balloon,” but one worth making.
As an album, Supreme Balloon is cheeky and curious, not wholly unlike Matmos’ past explorations into new arenas, but without the hard edges that made albums like The Rose… so attractively bizarre and difficult. This new record might not be in line with what you’d hope from a Matmos project, but rest assured – they’re sure to reinvent themselves again in no time.
