MATMOS – Ultimate Care II – LP – THRILL401

The most intriguing aspect of Matmos’ discography is that when you hear the concept of one of their albums, the limitations and restrictions they’ve placed upon themselves, you think, “Oh my god, how are they going to do that? What is that going to sound like?” And then, when you finally sit down to listen, it’s an experience you could never have imagined. The genius of Matmos is in exploring the tiniest moments, expanding unheard sounds into something massive and complex and completely unexpected. But Ultimate Care II sounds pretty much exactly the way you would expect it to. Even when the sounds are deconstructed and pitch­-shifted beyond the realm of recognizability, they’re still humming and buzzing over the machine’s sloshing water, the diagonal thumping of the machine on an uneven floor. The album’s length (about that of a typical wash cycle), the decision to keep it all as a single track, the framing of it­­ — it’s all a bit too deliberate for a band of Matmos’ calibre, an exercise in “Did you see what we did there?” that I’d expect out of a band just starting to experiment with sound, feeling the need to hold the listener’s hand a little too tight.

Jeremy Zerbe / Consequence