Matmos “Ultimate Care Ii” / Klara Lewis
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Press release Berlin, 19. April 2016 CTM Festival & Berghain present MATMOS “ULTIMATE CARE II” / KLARA LEWIS 1 JUNE 2016 | BERGHAIN | DOORS 20:00 | START 21:00 ADDRESS: AM WRIEZENER BAHNHOF, 10243 BERLIN TICKETS: 20 € advance: EVENTBRITE More Information: Berghain.de | ctm-festival.de | Facebook event page Presented by HHV Magazin A division of DISK / CTM – Baurhenn, Rohlf, Schuurbiers GbR • Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin, Germany | PAGE Tax Number 34/496/01492 • International VAT Number DE813561158 \* Bank Account: Berliner Sparkasse • BLZ: 10050000 • KTO: 636 24 508 • IBAN: De42 1005 0000 0063 6245 08 • BIC: BE LA DE BE MERGE The idea to make an album entirely out of the sounds of a washing machine came to Matmos’ Martin Schmidt as he drummed his fingers on the Whirlpool Ultimate Care II in his home studio, lost in abstracted contemplation of its cyclical rhythms. What began as a lark turned into a profound investigation into the creative process itself. “It started with just the sound of the washing machine itself” says Drew Daniel, the Baltimore-based duo’s other half. “We made a recording of its full cycle, but we were really disappointed.” Matmos then began experimenting, so that the album’s arc became “more and more elaborately involved in the question of: How do we turn this into an instrument?” Many experimental laundry sessions later, and with guest appearances by Dan Deacon, Max Eilbacher and Sam Haberman (Horse Lords), Jason Willett (Half Japanese) and Duncan Moore (Needle Gun), the album was released by Thrill Jockey in February 2016. Presented as one continuous track, the album is 38 minutes long, exactly the length of one wash cycle, and is titled Ultimate Care II, after its star. It comprises an amazing variety of sounds that combine into an eclectic syntax of various musical styles, from cyclic drones and domestic new age ambient, to techno-industrial booty bass, vogue beats, stoic krautrock rhythms, free jazz and musique concrète, confirming Matmos’s unique ability to make captivating music of great depth and humour with noises. By uniting the weird and the banal, Matmos never fail to create paradoxical listening sessions. Whether read as a parody of recent developments in “object-oriented ontology”, as a feminist critique of the alienation of domestic work, as a farewell to classic machine technology that is especially unsustainable in terms of waste and resources, or simply as a joyous journey into the unacknowledged beauty of everyday sounds, Ultimate Care II polarises. The washing machine was not available for comment. Matmos last visited Berlin on the occasion of their The Marriage of True Minds album release. Themed around parapsychological experiments, the album premiere was presented within CTM 2013 festival. http://vague-terrain.com | http://www.thrilljockey.com/artists/matmos | PAGE \* MERGE Opening the night is ascendant Swedish composer Klara Lewis, appearing in support of her upcoming Too release in May on Editions Mego. Lewis’s blurred rhythms flow over texture-rich, sometimes organic, sometimes abstract backgrounds, and create impressions of rich soundscapes that oscillate between warm optimism, strange eeriness and coolly aggressive gestures. The result is a hypnotic vortex that draws the listener into a unique timescale and idiosyncratic sound world with each piece. Too can perhaps be best described as a captivating form of immersive audio theatre that completely relies on the listener’s sonic imagination. Lewis’s debut album, Ett, was released by the venerable Editions Mego label in 2014, and was widely represented on year-end lists as one of 2014's strongest offerings across the electronic music spectrum. http://klaralewis.com http://editionsmego.com/release/EMEGO-210 Klara Lewis is supported by the 2016 SHAPE Platform. SHAPE – Sound and Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe is an initiative uniting 16 European independent festivals and organisations, and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. http://shapeplatform.eu PRESS CONTACT Taïca Replansky › [email protected] › +49 (0) 30 44041852 HIGH-RES PHOTOS › http://www.ctm-festival.de/press/press-downloads/ | PAGE \* MERGE .