MATTmos Review

nobody from witchmondz normal staff made it out to the matmos show tonight

matt dunlap (aka my brother - aka brother dunlap) was kind enough to write up a review of the show

also since there are no photos of the show online yet im going to throw up some sick doug graffiti that I found somewhere in richmond (I think on n.meadow in the fan)

WORD FOR WORD COPY AND PASTE

Dylan Mulshine asked me to write a review of the Digitalis festival featuring Matmos, held in Old Cabell Hall. So here it is. I haven't gone into info on the groups, because if you want more info on that it is best to go here

Digitalis is an annual computer music festival held by UVA, and this year focused mainly around the MICE Human-Computer Orchestra, a 250 person student/class group based around using a cloud of computers for digital works. I won't go into all of the performances shown at Digitalis, but there were a number of awesome pieces based around everyone with a computer logging to a web app and either using that app to add to the music, the app using the laptops to play sound, or both. This led to some very engrossing soundscapes. It was like being in a digital jungle.

To cap off the festival, Matmos went on to perform two pieces. The first one was a song that I did not get the name of, but it involved M.C. Schmidt using an acupuncture point detector that makes noise depending on the conductivity of a point on the body while Drew Daniel controlled an assortment of other sounds and beats. This sort of set-up continued with the second piece, "For Terry Riley", which involved the user of recordings of the Kronos Quartet rehearsing as well as making sounds with everyday objects. Drew Daniel controlled these recordings while M.C. Schmidt played pedal steel guitar, bells, tuning fork, etc. I can't seem to find a good video of either of these pieces at the moment, but if something comes up on youtube I'll link it here.

I guess if I have to actually "review" this festival, I have to say it was an awesome-free experience. I wish I had brought earplugs, because the sound was actually pretty loud and the highs in Matmos's performance made the ears bleed a little. But it was sick.