Ever since the IDM scene they emerged from in the late 1990s withered away and died, Matmos have thrived, in the process making a compelling case for themselves as electronic music's resident white coats. Beginning with 2001's A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure, the combined output of Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel (a Pitchfork contributor) so far this decade has seen them work within the form of some pre-established conceptual constraint. A Chance to Cut saw them fashion malformed, sideways techno out of samples culled from the operating theater; 2003's The Civil War was a blissfully uncool meditation on medieval instrumentation and American folk history; and 2006's The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, their most audacious and satisfying record, was a collection of bespoke sound and thought experiments dedicated to a cast of gay or closeted figures: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, Valerie Solanas, King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
It might be tempting for non-fans to imagine these conceptual parameters as being too intellectually grounded to yield much in the way of, oh, you know, fun, but fans have come to embrace them as part of the deal. That's partly because of Matmos' inherent sense of playfulness, humor, and energy-- they're just as comfortable being buffoons or instigators as they are intellectuals. But it's also because there's something strangely engaging about their transparent working process. If you know the backstory to a particular record, it's impossible to hear it and not entertain questions about how they might work within those bounds. By the simple act of listening, you become a participant.
But unlike The Rose Has Teeth, which might easily have come with an annotated bibliography of assigned supplementary reading, the underpinning idea behind Supreme Balloon revolves around a simple aesthetic limitation. This time around, Schmidt and Daniel stashed away their DAT recorders, microphones, and idle hurdy gurdys and vowed to record using only synthesizers as input sources. While there's comparatively little in the way of outside text to grapple with as a result, the decision opens the door on some gorgeous sonic shifts; spanning everything from standard-issue old-school Moogs, Arps, and Waldorfs to slightly more obscure modular antiques (indeed, if The Rose Has Teeth underlined Schmidt and Daniel's day jobs as accomplished academics, this exposes them as shameless gearsluts), Supreme Balloon is a woozily beautiful-sounding record, as crystalline, gleaming, and full-bodied as vintage Terry Riley.
That throwback spirit is underscored by the album's sequencing. Supreme Balloon comes split into two discernible sides, the former a collection of five "pop" numbers that includes the futzed-up circuitry of opener "Rainbow Flag", the punchy, almost-techno of the sprightly "Polychords", and the carbonated, 8-bit harp glissandos of "Exciter Lamp" (which features, weirdly and wonderfully, a brief passage from "O Canada"). Side two begins with the album's obvious centerpiece; clocking in at over 23 minutes long, the eponymously-titled "Supreme Balloon" is a chasm-wide, slow burning bit of analog psychedelia that conjures up very obvious comparisons to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream in their mid-70s heyday. A bubbling drone piece called "Cloudhopper" acts as the closer, and we're done.
Supreme Balloon features contributions from Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jay Lesser, and Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen, among others, while Riley himself appears on a bonus track of the iTunes version of the record. In the end, those appearances point to the album's only downside, which is the nagging sense that there's too much straight homage/pastiche and not enough of Matmos' considerable cleverness on display. Ultimately, though, it's a minor quibble; as Matmos surely know, beautiful sounds are their own kind of reward.
