Matmos - Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer (2022)

The late 2010s and early 2020s were one of the richest periods in Matmos' career, with albums like Plastic Anniversary and The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form reflecting extraordinary achievements in their own ways. Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt's streak continues with Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, a reimagining and reassembling of the works of Polish composer, theoretician, playwright, critic, and teacher Bogusław Schaeffer commissioned by the Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza as part of the Niepodlegla program. A contemporary of Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Krzysztof Penderecki, Schaeffer's boundary-breaking output in electronic music, classical composition, and theater makes him a fitting subject for Matmos' similarly freewheeling creativity. In comparison to The Consuming Flame, which found the duo working with 99 other artists on three hours' worth of music, Regards is a miniature, but a remarkably detailed one; even the titles of its pieces are anagrams of Schaeffer's name. Like many of Matmos' best works, the album echoes other works in their discography. Most obviously, it evokes the vintage electronics of The Supreme Balloon, the audio portraiture of The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast, and the finesse at reconfiguring a composer's body of work they displayed with Jefferson Friedman: Quartets. Once again, Matmos' knowledge of the roots of electronic music and modern composition is formidable, but the way they wield it isn't. On Regards, their skill at creating complete, satisfying pieces from sources like plastic objects and washing machines translates equally well to the more traditional instrumentation that they not-so-traditionally update while giving equal time to their playful and ominous sides on a set of pieces that play like a suite.