Matmos - Supreme Balloon

Matmos - an electronic duo hailing from San Francisco - whose trademark is the treatment and integration of sundry unconventional samples and field recordings into their experimentalist glitch-techno compositions, have abandoned the practice of recording all sorts of sounds via microphone and sampling them on their seventh album titled Supreme Balloon. Instead, the duo comprising of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel rely on various analog synthesizers such as Arp, Roland, Korg, Moog and Waldorf. Therefore, Supreme Balloon is by no means a traditional album from Matmos, but in terms of playfulness and composition of sounds (this time, analog synths) it compares well to Matmos' best work. In "Mister Mouth" Marshall Allen from Sun Ra sits in on EVI (electronic valve instrument, a midi controller based on trumpet, similar to the EWI which is based on saxophone). The title track lasts for 24 minutes and confirms just how influential the under-rated Krautrockers Cluster were (and are) to a lot of contemporary electronic experimentalists. Supreme Balloon is a Matmos album that shows the duo's warmer, more melodic and even a more improvisational side.

*This review was published in Estonian in a journal called Postimees. This is the English translation