Theoretically, this album is an eccentric exploration of art and biography via the medium of sound-scapes, created by the San Fransisco-based experimental duo MATMOS. In a nutshell, they chose to write a song about someone, and made noises out of objects of importance to the person in question, twisted the sounds, ergo an Audio Biography is born.
Matmos seek to push boundaries, using outlandish and taboo objects for their recordings – although how they managed to record an 'embalmed reproductive tract of a cow' is beyond me, and frankly, trying to shock listeners by using ‘the sound of semen’ is a bit contrived. Anyway, how do we know it actually was semen? They could have just cracked open an egg and recorded it pre-omelette. Needless to say though, whatever it was, it sounded squidgy.
As an album, it’s hard-going, with elements of very dark humour (well, you'd have to really), but seems to be something that you would listen to out of macabre fascination more than the joy of their music, which is frequently discordant, sometimes jazzy, sometimes just a cacophony of noise, and is terminally, terminally creepy.
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Not for the fainthearted, this album is slightly voyeuristic in a way, mainly because the listener is exposed to noises of the viscera, and body fluids of a very personal nature. There are occasional bouts of beauty, but this is overshadowed, probably intentionally, by the underlying blackness of the sounds.
The album is a very interesting concept, but don’t listen to it just before you go to bed, and if you do, you'd do as well to keep the lights on.
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