The music made by Matmos has a distinctly corporeal hue. Sometime Pitchfork contributor Drew Daniel and his partner M.C. Schmidt entered operating rooms to sample liposuctions, plastic surgeries, bonesaws, and other medical procedures for their 2001 album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure. Their work has been constructed from bowed rat cages and the slow plod of feet traipsing through a box of gravel; it's far more tactile than anything usually described as "electronic". Even earlier tracks such as "It Seems" and "Schluss" (from Matmos) were so abundantly expressive it felt like they were stretching into the physical world. With The Ganzfeld, a three-track EP released as an extension of the central concept of their forthcoming LP The Marriage of True Minds, Daniel and Schmidt have plunged inward for inspiration. This is music based around a series of parapsychological experiments conducted by the pair, an attempt to turn cognitive behavior into something tangible to funnel into their work.
As with prior Matmos efforts, the ambition here is bold, both in the base concept and its execution. Two of the three tracks are pulled from the psychology sessions, hinting at the density of thought and vision to follow. This EP is named after a strain of testing for ESP devised in the 1930s, the same experiment the duo adapted for their tests: They conducted experiments over a four-year period in which test subjects were blasted with white noise in a state of sensory deprivation. Daniel attempted to transmit the concept of the band's new album into their minds, with his subjects' resultant thoughts forming the basis for the music on The Marriage of True Minds. If this release can be used as a barometer of what's to come on the full length, expect something strung up between Wagnerian grandiosity and delirious cacophony, executed with the brilliant detail of prior Matmos recordings.
"Very Large Green Triangles (Edit)" resides in the same kind of gloriously aloof space Trevor Horn often sought out with his ZZT productions-- Propaganda's imposing "Dr. Mabuse" comes to mind. There's also a playful sense of exploration, occasionally mirroring the musical foibles that Dieter Meier and Boris Blank bring to Yello. It suggests The Marriage of True Minds is a surge toward a much bigger place than Matmos have worked in before. If so, it's a fitting change, and one that mirrors the scope of the prep work undertaken. But the near 13-minute "Just Waves" hints that the broader strokes may not be easily palatable. It's mostly constructed from voices piled on top of one another, creating a feeling akin to standing in the corner at a party and listening to conversations overlapping with one another, crafting their own peculiar forms and rhythms in the process.
Matmos have made a career out of trading in those kind of contorted notes and figures, so it's disappointing to find the rote club reworking of "You" at the heart of this EP. There's nothing about it that ties into the work elsewhere, providing a jarring and unwelcome detraction from the program. It always feels like Matmos spend a great deal of time thinking about their approach, taking one step forward then diagrammatically mapping out how that step was taken to determine how they can put a different spin on it. "You" may be lacking in that, but when "Just Waves" is stripped down to a single voice, it's a pleasingly perplexing sensation, brought about because it actually feels less logical than the battering ram of intersecting dialogue that preceded it. The ability to draw a sharp outline around the unfamiliar, to draw definition from abstraction, is something Matmos excel at, and this EP suggests all the pieces are in place for The Marriage of True Minds to extend that strand in beguiling ways.
