hen the phrase ‘electronic music’ is uttered, several things come to my mind. First, I think of teenagers bouncing up and down at a rave to pointless house music, exchanging code names and twirling glow sticks. The next picture is that of modern day advertising, with sports cars cruising along winding highways to tired strains of electronica. Though most of my experiences with such music have been negative, I find some of it decent. Aphex Twin’s hectic skitters are actually quite relaxing to me, with their start-stop mindset and electronic craziness, but they are few and far between in a genre designed primarily to alienate the listener. I had not heard of Matmos when I first picked this album up, but the concept of music made from medical sources was too interesting to pass up. I had heard that these two rich kids had snuck recording equipment into various surgeries, and mixed them up into this electronic music, a bizarre, but enticing idea. The initial appeal of this album came from the principle of man versus machine; perhaps this album would deliver where Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ had so disappointingly failed.


The album starts off with ‘Lipostudio’ which features a variety of operating bleeps and the sickening gurgle of fat during liposuction. The cold mechanical machine noises are transformed into a living entity through the Matmos boys’ studio wizardry. The final sounds, once combined, sound great, an orchestra of medicinal craziness, showing us that those sounds we had looked for in computers all those years had been, disgustingly, right inside of us.


The song ‘L.A.S.I.K.’ manages to turn a simple laser-eye procedure into an alien nightmare. Spacious beams of sound and light strike our ears from all directions, while menacing clicks dance below (or is it above) our threshold of sound. The mood grows eerily, with no sign of letting up, until all is silent and we hear a human doctor reaffirm us ‘congratulations, you did great’. Throughout the album, in similar ways, we are given bizarre, alternate takes on the world of modern medicine.


Not all tracks on the cd concentrate on human surgery; ‘For Felix and all the rats’ is based on the manipulated sounds of the mangled cage of a laboratory rat, the ghostly strains of an otherworldly phantasm crying out in the night. This song is particularly affective in relating the alienation and fear of its subject, with this conveyance of feeling being the most successful I’ve ever heard from the typically unforgiving electronic music.


Perhaps this isn’t the first time such music has been attempted, but its overall results are spectacular, and both a wonder and a delight to listen to.