Matmos premiere surreal music video & release new song! BIG|BRAVE break down OST, Sally Anne Morgan new album unboxed & KEXP premiere, and Philadelphia’s Eye Flys make a mix for the road!
Weekly Newsletter for May 15, 2025.
Matmos share new song "The Rust Belt" with an animated music video!
Matmos, the duo of Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, have shared the new track and video for "The Rust Belt," taken from their upcoming album Metallic Life Review, out June 20th. The video is animated by artist Jack Colbert and is a celebration of the myriad eclectic materials used to make Metallic Life Review, animating pocket-sized metallic objects that Colbert sourced from metal detecting. Colbert describes the video: "The objects' unique eroded surfaces overlap through replacement animation, and the cyclical rhythm of the film mimics the normalization of discarding and replacing belongings."
On the track "The Rust Belt," Matmos' Drew Daniel elaborates:
"This song evolved over a year of editing in which we kept adding and taking away and playing solos on top and chopping and re-mixing. The intro is entirely manipulations of aluminum cans and then it gradually expands to include more and more sounds, including us playing some “drum solos” on all the pots and pans from our own kitchen. The central riff is made out of a steel bar that M.C. Schmidt played with his fist and fingers. The ending sounds are manipulations of a steel railing from an underpass in Switzerland. The kind of foghorn-like tone is made with a steel slide-whistle that we are heavily processing."
“The Rust Belt” features Thor Harris of Swans and Water Damage (the latter of which features our own More Eaze who will be performing with claire rousay tomorrow in Texas).
On Thor Harris's drumming on the track, Daniel adds:
"I had always loved Thor Harris's drumming – I saw him in Swans at Basilica Soundsystem, and I have been jamming the Water Damage records, which are incredible. So it was really sweet and unexpected when he wrote out of the blue to say that he liked Matmos and wondered if we might ever do something together; I sent him “Norway Doorway” and asked him to respond to it in any way so long as he was playing metal objects. When we got the takes we were really impressed – there was a lot of great material – and since “Norway Doorway” and “The Rust Belt” are the same tempo, we split what he sent in half and used some of it in the first song and some in the second song. In a way, his presence joins together the more militant, industrial sounding songs that launch side one. I’m so glad that he wrote to us."
Photo by Obie Feldi
Matmos’ singular compositional approach resembles the creation of sculpture. The incredibly detailed pieces that make up each album are created with carefully selected sounds that adhere to a specific conceptual framework. The duo, composed makes music that defies both category and expectation, shattering notions of what electronic music is by questioning what else it could be. In the case of Metallic Life Review, what may be possible with the sound that metal objects make?
Matmos’s approach answers this question with gleeful abandon. Underpinning their adventurous and inquisitive spirits is a sense of real feeling, never shying from the difficult and unsettling moments, but embracing the breadth of human experiences that live in communication with the constraints of each project. Metallic Life Review is a musical love story transmuted into sound, the result of a life filled with curiosity and powered by boundless exploration. Matmos have again made something spellbinding, brilliant and emotionally resonant.
Get Metallic Life Review on limited Metallic Silver LP and pick up a set of very limited postcards while you are at it, created by Ted Mineo with Matmos
BIG|BRAVE album break down + exclusive Q&A with Matthieu Ball!
OST the acclaimed new album by BIG|BRAVE is an outlier in their catalog.
We sat down with Mathieu Ball who shared the origins of the highly improvisational album, how the band invented The Instrument, and what it was like to create a soundtrack for a yet-to-be made film.
Listen to “innominate Nº iv.” below and check out the epic photos of BIG|BRAVE live at The Garage with The Bug by Claire Filip.
How would you describe the record to someone who isn’t familiar with the project?
Matthieu Ball: This record is quite different for us, both sonically and in the way we approached the writing and recording process. We initially booked three days at Machines with Magnets Studio with Seth Manchester, with absolutely no idea of what we’d be doing. As the recording dates approached, we decided to make more of an ambient record, rather than a traditional BIG|BRAVE record (with a full band and standard instrumentation). The idea then came to us to treat this album as if it were a soundtrack—a soundtrack for a film that didn’t yet exist.
Are there any significant developments in how this record was written and recorded compared to older works? How did you approach writing a soundtrack for a film that didn’t exist yet?
The record was fully written and recorded in the studio. As we often experiment during sessions and keep things loose enough to leave room for improvisation, there were absolutely no rehearsals for this one. Everything you hear on the record is something we played or came up with on the spot. We were all free to enter the live room at any time and record a take with whatever instrument was at hand. Once we were satisfied with an initial foundational take, we would each take turns adding to it until we felt it was a finished piece. The entire project revolved around a simpler, more adventurous instrumentation than we typically use—featuring a homemade instrument made from salvaged piano strings, a Wurlitzer, prepared piano, voice (without words), synths, and a very limited amount of electric guitar.
With the idea of the record being a film soundtrack, the films and soundtracks we referenced were all minimal in style, which then influenced our minimal approach to this project. Although this record could stand on its own, we envisioned it being paired with moving images, which introduced a fresh and exciting way of working.
Is there a narrative for the soundtrack that you envisioned from the start? Or did one reveal itself as you were constructing the record/mixing and ordering things?
Everything revealed itself in the studio; the story unfolded as the days progressed. The very first thing we recorded was Track 1 (a very quiet and minimal piece), and that set the tone for the rest of the record. We would move forward, then come back and listen to pieces recorded earlier in the session, gradually pushing the narrative forward.
What made you decide to make The Instrument specifically for this record? Can you explain how you went about making it, and how its construction informed the way the album came together?
The idea of making this instrument developed somewhat independently from the record. As I continuously collect and search for different sound-making objects, I found myself in possession of salvaged piano strings. For months, an exposed piano soundboard had been resting against the wall in the hallway of Robin’s tattoo studio. Every time I walked by, I would instinctively run my hands along the strings. Eventually, I decided to remove the 30 lowest strings and bring them to my workshop. Using a thick piece of maple, I built what would become this 11-stringed instrument.
Since I had built it so close to the time we were meant to head down to MWM (Machines with Magnets), it quickly became clear that I would be bringing this new instrument with us to the session. It ended up playing a significant role in the writing of the record, as most pieces would start with a foundational performance on the instrument. Whether plucked, struck with mallets, or bowed, we were all unfamiliar with it but very curious. We each took turns playing and recording with it in whatever way we felt inspired.
Due to the nature of this session, it’s almost impossible to pinpoint exactly how everything came together. No one stuck to a specific instrument; we all roamed around the studio, picking up whatever we felt like recording with. With so much freedom in form, mood, and instrumentation, the way it all came together also means that recollection of who played what on each track is somewhat lost. Fortunately, Robin took notes during the session about who played what on each track. Looking back at those notes, it’s fascinating to see how we moved between instruments, how the tracks evolved, and when some of us chose not to play at all on certain pieces.
Sally Anne Morgan Second Circle The Horizon Unboxed!
"Sally Anne Morgan’s music sounds as though it has crept out of the backwoods of her native North Carolina, her voice, banjo and fiddle thrumming with the wet heaviness of that region’s stormy summers." - The Guardian, Album of the Month
Multi-instrumentalist, artist and naturalist Sally Anne Morgan’s new album Second Circle on the Horizon is a pastoral beauty that illustrates her connection to her environment through innovative ambience created with folk instrumentation and techniques.
“I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds, some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern. I have played so many fiddle tunes, the fiddle tune, the structure, the melody, are at the root of all music I make, whether I want them to be or not. Old time fiddle music is the seed that grew into the part of my brain that makes music, and everything I do somehow seems to come back to that. I think something gets lost when you’re too focused on honing and refining everything. Someone who is not focused on virtuosic playing, but more rustic simplicity and spaciousness, there is life and energy to it, electricity.”
Sally Anne Morgan’s next single will premiere EXCLUSIVELY on KEXP. Tune in this Sunday, May 18th at 8 AM PT / 10 AM ET to hear “Eye is the First” ahead of its wide release on May 21st.
Second Circle the Horzion’s cover replicates a collage made by Sally, using materials she printed at her own RatBee Press. Available on Limited Edition Opaque Lavender LP, get it while you can. Bookmark deluxe versions are now sold out!
Cratediggers: Eye Flys + tour kicks off May 20!
Photo by Paul Havelin, @paul_havelinb
Week two for you to listen to a playlist by Philly’s Eye Flys. When talking about things stuck in our head with Eye Flys, they gleefully replied, "I once had Mexican Radio stuck in my head for three months." What? Make us a playlist! Philly's heaviest complied. Again from Eye Flys, "Here's a list of perfectly catchy, but punishingly annoying head stickers... Happy punishing."
May 20 - Pittsburgh, PA - Mr. Roboto Project *
May 21 - Louisville, KY - The Portal *
May 22 - Chicago, IL - Burlington Bar *
May 23 - Minneapolis, MN - Caterwaul 2025
May 24 - Madison, WI - Mickey's
May 25 - Cleveland, OH - No Class
Sept. 26 - Richmond, VA - Dark Days Bright Nights Fest
* w/ PINKO