Matmos

There's a lot of lip service paid these days to various electronic-based music being 'experimental,' but Matmos' musical practice genuinely deserves this much-abused term. Using samplers, analogue keyboards, field recordings, and guitars, Matmos make atmospheric, idiosyncratic electronica. In addition to incorporating chance operations into their sequencing environment, many songs are based upon a working methodology of 'conceptual restriction' -- songs are built entirely out of samples from a single sound source: field recordings, contact microphones on hair, even the sound of an amplified synapse from crayfish nerve tissue. Sometimes these samples and recordings are built into elaborate rhythmic sequences verging on (but tweeking) the by-now familiar sub-genres of trip hop, drum and bass, and electro; sometimes these sound sources are kept beat-free, and sculpted into frighteningly noisy atmospheres, or shot through with eerie silent pauses and gaps.