This album, with the theme of telepathy, follows on the heels of Matmos's excellent The Ganzfeld EP, which was released at the end of 2012, with this effort drawing from the same sensory deprivation experiments. Matmos (aka MC Schmidt and Drew Daniel) conducted as many as 50 of these Ganzfeld experiments over the course of a year. In the session, the participant would lay on a mattress, their eyes covered by a bisected ping pong ball, white noise playing on headphones. Daniel would then attempt to telepathically transmit the concept of the album into their minds. From recordings made, the duo then picked their favourite melodies, ideas and stream-of-consciousness outpourings from which to build an album of original material. To drive the theme home, The Marriage of True Minds is bookended by two covers about telepathy: the gorgeously jazzy "You," originally by Holger Hiller, and a surprisingly doom-y version of "ESP," by the Buzzcocks. Despite the academic-sounding concept, The Marriage of True Minds is Matmos's most accessible album to date, as well as featuring more live instrumentation within the mix. To further the theme, the album includes several musical references to scores from movies about the paranormal — think Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" as repurposed by The Exorcist — giving some of the tracks an eerie undertone. However, the outwardly fun melodies and rhythms are what define the album. (Thrill Jockey)
BONNAROO: Kendrick Lamar What Stage, Manchester TN, June 16
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