Matmos and So Percussion have both distinguished themselves by hearing music where others didn't. So Percussion are devoted to contemporary classical music written for percussion, a slender, under-explored niche that they have proven to contain revelations. Matmos, the partnership of Martin Schmidt and former Pitchfork contributor Drew Daniel, have always heard symphonies in life's smallest details, sampling things like thawing streams and liposuction vacuums and building busy pop tapestries out of them. Together, they have performed off and on for a number of years, and it's easy to see, when they are together onstage, what these two curious, highly specialized sensibilities found attractive in each other. Treasure State is the group's first collaboration on record, and the good news is that they have achieved a sort of mind meld between their two approaches.
Matmos' albums typically come with some conceptual bent; 2001's A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure sampled the sounds of an operating room, while 2006's The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast consisted of 10 sonic portraits of unconventional gay icons. Treasure State is a bit more straightforward. Billed as a "representation of an American landscape"-- Montana, in this case, where the album was recorded, and whose official nickname gives the album its title-- Treasure State consists of eight tactile miniatures exploring the timbre of a series of materials. There seems to be no higher agenda at work than to discover how different objects sound when they are clonked with mallets or scratched or rubbed together, and this makes for an absorbing and refreshingly visceral listening experience.
Both Matmos and So Percussion share an uncanny ear for textures, and on Treasure State, it is nearly impossible to separate out where one group's contributions begin and the other's end-- it all coalesces into an engaging swirl of pinprick detail. "Treasure", the opening track, begins with some clear, ringing chimes, reminiscent of the gamelan music of composer Lou Harrison, before a wave of rustling noises slowly overtakes it. Trying to identify all those noises, or figure out whence they came, would be like trying to catalogue the species of insects in a rainforest with your eyes closed. The music works best when you just let the confounding clatter just wash over you.
Some of the pieces on the album bear a title suggestive of the materials used to perform it: "Aluminum", "Needles", "Water". The last is particularly evocative of its source, almost to the point of discomfort. As water is sloshed vividly around your headphone-space, dumped loudly into pails, and drizzled in thin streams near your eardrums, you may find yourself with an overpowering urge to hit pause and visit the bathroom. Matmos have always had a slightly morbid interest in the private sounds our bodies make, the kind most of us wouldn't relish amplifying, and there is a scattering of those here: humid squelches, smacking lips, salival pops.
For the most part, though, Matmos have toned down their more outré side for this project. There are no samples of, say, amplified crayfish nerve tissue or latex fetish wear. Their fascinations here are more practical and everyday. Like "Shard", which makes enticing and crunchy musique concrète out of broken pieces of pottery and the grinding of dinner plates. This is undoubtedly headphones music; trying to play this in the background would do a disservice to the very notion behind the project, which seems to beg for an undivided focus on that which we normally take for granted. This has always been Matmos' mission, and they have found marvelous partners in So Percussion, who add unprecedented levels of warmth and dimension to Matmos' busily crawling textures. Together, they make music of such heightened awareness to detail that it makes you almost hear your own pulse.
