Matmos have announced an incredibly ambitious new album, which will feature a total of 99 guest musicians. Called The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form, the epic project will feature the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never, Yo La Tengo, Matthew Herbert, Giant Sand and many more.
A press release sums up the project like this:
Oriented around a deceptively simple idea, the album features contributions from 99 different musicians, all given only one simple instruction: they could play anything that they wanted, but the tempo of any rhythmic material had to be set at 99 beats per minute. The resulting album is a three-hour long assemblage that travels across a shifting kaleidoscope of genre, mood and density, all synchronized to a constant underlying tempo.
For a taste of that, you can hear the album's "No Concept," which features clipping. and David Grubbs, down below.
Other album guests include Mouse on Mars, Rabit and Marisa Anderson, as well as members of Pig Destroyer, Sutekh Hexen and Locrian, among others.
The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form will arrive as a three-CD set on August 21 via Thrill Jockey. The entire thing has been crafted as one long piece, and the physical package will come with a fold-out poster that "visually tracks the exact timing of each of the 99 guest musician's contributions through color coded bars."
You can now pre-order The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form.
Matmos last released an album in 2019 with Plastic Anniversary, while offshoot solo project the Soft Pink Truth released the albums Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase? and Am I Free to Go? earlier this year.
A press release sums up the project like this:
Oriented around a deceptively simple idea, the album features contributions from 99 different musicians, all given only one simple instruction: they could play anything that they wanted, but the tempo of any rhythmic material had to be set at 99 beats per minute. The resulting album is a three-hour long assemblage that travels across a shifting kaleidoscope of genre, mood and density, all synchronized to a constant underlying tempo.
For a taste of that, you can hear the album's "No Concept," which features clipping. and David Grubbs, down below.
Other album guests include Mouse on Mars, Rabit and Marisa Anderson, as well as members of Pig Destroyer, Sutekh Hexen and Locrian, among others.
The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form will arrive as a three-CD set on August 21 via Thrill Jockey. The entire thing has been crafted as one long piece, and the physical package will come with a fold-out poster that "visually tracks the exact timing of each of the 99 guest musician's contributions through color coded bars."
You can now pre-order The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form.
Matmos last released an album in 2019 with Plastic Anniversary, while offshoot solo project the Soft Pink Truth released the albums Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase? and Am I Free to Go? earlier this year.
