Oct 20, 2009, 5:00 PM
Gallery 400

M.C. Schmidt
Voices Lecture Series

M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel form the experimental electronic music duo Matmos. Using samplers, analogue keyboards, field recordings and guitars, Matmos make atmospheric, idiosyncratic electronica. In addition to incorporating chance operations into their sequencing environment, many songs are based upon a working methodology of “conceptual restriction”- songs are built entirely out of samples from a single sound source: field recordings, contact microphones on hair, even the sound of an amplified synapse from crayfish nerve tissue.

In 1998, Matmos remixed the Björk single “Alarm Call”. Subsequently, Matmos worked with Björk on her albums Vespertine (2001) and Medúlla (2004), as well as her Vespertine and Greatest Hits tours. In November 2004, Matmos spent 97 hours in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as artists in residence, performing music with friends, musical guests and onlookers. Matmos recently composed the music for Daria Martin’s Minotaur, currently on view at the MCA, Chicago.

Schmidt has been making experimental electronic music for many years, as the leader of avant-garde drone outfit X/I and industrial occultists Iaocore, in which he did time with current members of Amber Asylum and Tipsy. He has also served as a professor In the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Schmidt will be lecturing on Musique Concrete.