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. Animated and directed by artist Jack Colbert, the video 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—from pull tabs to gold rings. 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.”
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; we 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.”
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 of Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, 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? By ignoring the categorical genre constraints associated with terms like found sound, music concrète, techno, glitch and, yes, “metal” and pushing into new territory, 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.
Matmos will be touring throughout 2025, including shows in the UK and Europe starting next week and the US just after album release, kicking off with an album release show at Knockdown Center in New York.
Matmos tour dates
May 23 – Wiltshire, UK – Acid Horse Festival
May 25 – Glasgow, UK – Baked Beans on the Doorstep
May 28 – Berlin, DE – Silent Green
May 30 – Pordenone, IT – Astro Club
Jun. 1 – Fano, IT – Bagli Elsa
Jun. 2 – Roma, IT – Monk
Jun. 4 – Genova, IT – Giardino di Mentelacole
Jun. 6 – Milano, IT – Museo della scienza
Jun. 7 – Bologna, IT – DumBo
Jun. 12 – Vienna, AT – Flucc
Jun. 14 – London, UK – Rio Cinema
Jun. 21 – New York City, NY – Knockdown Center
Jun. 25 – Philadelphia, PA – Solar Myth
Jun. 29 – Chicago, IL – Constellation
Jul. 3 – Louisville, KY – Art Sanctuary
Jul. 4 – Pittsburgh, PA – The Government Center
Jul. 8 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Jul. 11 – Los Angeles, CA – 2220 Arts
Jul. 16 – Portland, OR – Holocene
Aug. 30 – Washington, DC – Black Cat
Nov. 22-28 – Santa Cruz de Tenerife, ES – Espacio Cultural el Tanque / Keroxen Festival
