Matmos at Kagurane, May 18th 2019

I read in an article not so long ago that this year’s gas emissions stemming from the production and incineration of plastics will be the equivalent of 189 coal power plants working at full steam. It is estimated that in around ten years the number will quadruple. That alarming fact doesn’t even bring to account the devastating impact of plastic pollution in oceans. We all have seen pictures and images of marine life struggling with the debris underwater, struggling to survive in their environment. These eloquent and heartbreaking images brought the political-conceptual Matmos’ set to a close this evening.

Before the main act took the stage several bands preceded them. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it from the beginning. I ended up missing Max Eilbacher & Duncan Moor, Klonns and Jeff Carey. Got there on time for Cemetery, who bathe the place with ethereal sounds leaning towards noise without being harsh. His half an hour flew smoothly, the visuals projected behind him complemented the set nicely. In The Sun came next. A trio comprised of a drummer and two guys on electronics. Their sound owned a debt to the Motorik Krautrock beat of the seventies, they keyboard parts reminded me of Kraftwerk a bit.

After them Offseason switched gears with a truly challenging Merzbow-like harsh sound. They were also a trio, this time with a drummer, a guitar player and another guy with a neon light bulb that, in contact with an electronic device, produced some feedback. If you’ve seen a David Lynch movie you can imaging what the combination of that sound and the flickering effect will be like. I think the audience dug it at first, judging by a dude who danced up front for must of the acts. There were not a lot of dynamics of subtleties, though. The drummer, who blast-beat his way through the whole performance was really good.

Right before the headliners, Keito (with a Greek sigma letter instead of the e) performed a set of hip hop flavored beats that somewhat contrasted with the more experimental affairs heard previously. The accessibility of his sound didn’t necessarily meant dumbing things down, it was quite the opposite of that. The set was carefully design to reach a climax and to elicit a response from the crowd. At the same time it was a showcase of his abilities laying down those beats manually with a drum machine on the spot. Despite some technical setbacks, it was definitely a good segue to the main act.

I forgot to mention that I went straight from work to the show and when I got there I was relieved to see another guy not a lot older than me at the club wearing a suit. I thought “great, I’m not the only salary man here”. After a close inspection I realized it was Martin Schmidt. Him and Drew Daniel were in the audience for each of the opening bands before they took the stage as Matmos. Those guys are true class acts. 

They started their set with Thermoplastic Riot Shield. They explained at the beginning of the show that plastic was the source of each sound performed on stage. That every single song -except for one- was constructed using samples of sounds coming from plastic. In this era of police brutality I don’t thing it was gratuitous that they chose to open their set with a song sampling riot police gear. The images behind them perfectly described their sense of humor and their conscious attempts of transgressing the established codes by looping a group of armed forces in a way that would make them seem like their dancing, or also the use of the shield almost as a sex toy.

It was fascinating to see how they used physical objects on stage to reproduce the sounds from Plastic Anniversary, their latest record. Being balloons, drumming from a huge tupperware box or rubbing plastic bags against a microphone. The process was really cool to watch. The one song with no plastic in it was performed using a keyboard and it had a sort of an old school R&B feel to it. For The Crying Pill they actually used the blue pill-looking item from the album cover on stage, they said they’ve owned that thing for ages and always wanted to write a song around it. In Breaking Bread they literally broke a record from the band Bread on stage and looped the sound of the vinyl breaking live.

The brief 55 minutes set was peppered with humor and audience interaction from the beginning and, as the record, it changed tone drastically with the last song. Plastisphere denounced the devastating effects of plastic in the environment with an atmospheric mood with no drums and just the sound of plastic materials rubbed against a mic accompanying the subtle drone in the background. The aforementioned images, described in the first paragraph, were also timestamped, going back to the eighties. This served as a reminder of the perennial threat, in its non-biodegradable capacity, that plastic imposes. Without the images you could swear that you were listening to rain. Seeing the song performed live I realized they were talking about how plastics will end up replacing nature, in other words killing all life. Immediate action is a must and Matmos made that point eloquently.

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