Ultimate Care II is the new album from renowned conceptual electronics duo Matmos (Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt). Recorded in the basement studio of their home in Baltimore, the album is constructed entirely out of the sounds generated by a Whirlpool Ultimate Care II model washing machine. Like its namesake, the album runs across its variations as a single, continuous thirty eight minute experience that starts with the grinding turn of the wash size selection wheel, and ends with the alert noise that signals that the wash is done. Between these audio-verité book-ends, we experience an exploded view of the machine, hearing it in normal operation, but also as an object being rubbed and stroked and drummed upon and prodded and sampled and sequenced and processed by the duo, with some occasional extra help from an ultra-local crew of guest stars (some of whom regularly do laundry chez Matmos). Dan Deacon, Max Eilbacher (Horse Lords), Sam Haberman (Horse Lords), Jason Willett (Half Japanese), and Duncan Moore (Needle Gun) all took part, either playing the machine like a drum, processing its audio, or sending MIDI data to the duo's samplers. The vocabulary of the Ultimate Care II, its rhythmic chugs, spin cycle drones, rinse cycle splashes, metallic clanks and electronic beeps are parsed into an eclectic syntax of diverse musical genres. The result is a suite of rhythmic, melodic and drone-based compositions that morph dramatically, but remain fanatically centered upon their single, original sound source.
Like their promiscuous DJ sets, the palette of genres in play reveals Matmos' hybrid musical DNA: Industrial music, vogue beats, gabber, Miami bass, free jazz, house, krautrock, drone, musique-concrete, and new age music all churn up to the surface and are sucked back into the depths. In this moiré pattern of textures, the listener encounters elements that sound like horns, kick drums, xylophones or sine waves, but in fact each component is meticulously crafted out of a manipulated sample of the machine. In other hands, such relentless conceptual tightness would court claustrophobia. Happily, Matmos' willingness to transform audio and engage pop structure bypasses arid, arty thought exercises and produces instead their signature effect: abject and unusual noises yielding weirdly listenable music.
In addition to releasing a string of acclaimed albums over the past 20 years, Matmos have played the uterus and reproductive tract of a cow at the San Francisco Art Institute, canisters of helium at Radio City Music Hall while opening for Bjork, and John Cage's personal collection of conch shells at Carnegie Hall
Matmos have also collaborated and performed with Terry Riley, The Kronos Quartet, Antony Hegarty, William Basinski, and Horse Lords
Ultimate Care II features guest appearances from fellow Baltimore musicians Dan Deacon and members of Horse Lords, Half Japanese, and Needle Gun
Matmos will tour throughout the world in 2016
The album announcement was met with unimanimous excitement and covered by People, TIME, NBC News, Pitchfork, SPIN, Flavorwire, and more
Full press campaign being worked by New York PR firm Blake Zidell & Associates
Three videos will be serviced: one made by Baltimore musician Max Eilbacher (Horse Lords, Needle Gun), one by infamous collage artist/plunderphonic cut-up wizard Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us), and one by Ed Apodaca of San Francisco motion graphics firm L-inc, who created the 'Very Large Green Triangles' video for Matmos' last album
LP pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged in a heavy stock jacket with full color inner sleeve and free download card. A limited supply of the LP will be pressed on 'clean laundry' (blue with white swirl) color vinyl. CD version in digipack with 8 page booklet
The artwork for the album is constructed entirely out of photographs of the Whirlpool Ultimate Care II machine shot in its natural habitat and then digitally manipulated by New York artist Ted Mineo. Both members of Matmos are active solo musicians, Schmidt under his own name, Daniel under his Soft Pink Truth moniker 'The ability to draw a sharp outline around the unfamiliar, to draw definition from abstraction, is something Matmos excel at' - Pitchfork 'Matmos doing what they do best, pulling together theory, humor, and killer compositional chops into music at once intense, playful, and uncannily coherent' - SPIN