Matmos. Photo by AJ Farkas.
Drew Daniel and Martin “M.C." Schmidt, who comprise the electronic music duo Matmos, are not what you would consider classically trained musicians.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course (how many classically-trained pop musicians do you know?) and in this case, it doesn't really matter; Matmos's music, a mixture of bizarre samples (the noises of a plastic surgery operation, field recordings of Civil War-era songs, the movements of live snails), drum machines and synthesizers, is more assembled than played.
But recently, Schmidt and Daniel have begun to make inroads into the western art music world, and that's placed them in a weird position.
“We played Carnegie Hall a few weeks ago," Drew Daniel explains, “and it was a very much sort of eerie, 'Pinch me, when are the Music Police gonna show up and lead us away in handcuffs?'"
Given this anxiety, you'd think that collaborating with a group like So Percussion would be a bad idea. So Percussion are some of the pre-eminent percussion players in the classical world. They debut pieces by Steve Reich and Paul Lansky. They are fixtures at the Bang on a Can marathon. Or, as Schmidt puts it, when asked to describe their performative abilities: “They're fucking monsters."
But somehow, the two groups have made it work, first at the Bleeding Edge Festival in San Francisco, and most recently on Treasure State, a sublime, inspired collaboration, with unusual sound sources (cacti, ceramic dishes, beer cans) and a cornucopia of expertly played percussion instruments all digitally mushed together into music that represents both groups wonderfully.
Because that last part--a collaboration that represents both groups wonderfully--represents an increasingly rare occurrence in pop music, we got Daniel and Schmidt on the phone to discuss the politics of collaborating with people who are more musically adept than you (among other things), and here's what you need to know.
Even the album art, which everybody fussed over, turned out well on Treasure State.
Make Everybody Comfortable
Both parties need to be comfortable for a collaboration to succeed, and that means getting over insecurities. And So Percussion, perhaps sensing that they would have to take the lead there, essentially ceded control to Matmos. Or so it seemed.
“They came to us like, 'What should we do together, tell us what to. Use our skills for your ends,'" Schmidt recalls. “Which, in the long run, possibly wasn't entirely honest, but it's a really good way to put people at ease, you know?
“And it totally worked."
Ultimately, both So and Matmos pulled weight and had an equal hand in Treasure State's sound and direction, but they only got there by making everybody feel relaxed.
Don't Be Intimidated. Take Advantage!
Every musician or group has limitations, so it's important to take advantage of collaborators' unique skill sets. In this case, Daniel and Schmidt reveled in the opportunity to work with musicians of So's caliber. “They can play their asses off," Daniel says.
“You tell them, like, 'Oh, play an Aaron Copland-like Martin Denny arrangement,' and suddenly they're playing, like, 'Appalachian Spring,' but with guero and bird calls and klaves.
“Their very ability becomes powerful as a sort of challenge to us," he continues. “So what might look like, 'Oh we get to tell them what to do,' in fact they're so good at doing really complex things that it challenges us to think of the best thing to ask them to do."
The Biggest Challenges Are Sometimes Non-Musical
Any time you work with others, there's a worry that the results won't reflect well on either party, and Treasure State was no different. “That worry about that kind of art by committee being...neither fully expressive of Matmos nor fully expressive of So Percussion, it did worry us," Daniel admits.
But because of everything mentioned above, that was the least of their problems. “We had more trouble with everything except the music," Schmidt says. “Like, the cover of the record and how you know like all the sort of more bureaucratic decisions. That was where I felt like, 'I hate working with six people!'"
As a recorded product, mapping out who did what on which song of Treasure State is incredibly difficult; each song went through many stages of jamming, mixing, chopping, resampling, editing, and remixing. “It's like the seven layers of Troy," Daniel remarks.
In person, it's another matter entirely. The unique mix of textures and genres that brush past on the album are deployed with a thrilling precision on stage. All the more so because of the fact that it's such an unlikely pairing working so beautifully together.
