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Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
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Return to Archive

by Matmos

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9.99 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    PRE-ORDER ITEM SET TO SHIP JANUARY 2024

    Full length CD, liner notes insert, wallet style digipak. All US orders will be shipped USPS media mail.

    Includes unlimited streaming of 'Return to Archive' via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Return to Archive via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 10 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $16.98 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    PRE-ORDER ITEM SET TO SHIP MAY 2024

    Classic Folkways black jacket with paste-on wrap-around cover. Standard weight and standard color vinyl LP. Image is a mock-up.

    Includes unlimited streaming of 'Return to Archive' via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Return to Archive via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    shipping out on or around May 3, 2024
    Purchasable with gift card

      $23.98 USD or more 

     

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about

In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album Return to Archive, which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways. On just the album’s first track, dolphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers co-mingle in a fantasia of sound both everyday and extraordinary. Each track on Return to Archive morphs its source material into something completely unexpected, honoring and expanding on Folkways’ legacy of sonic exploration. Featuring Evicshen and Aaron Dilloway.

credits

released November 3, 2023

Produced by Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt
Recorded and mixed at our homes in Baltimore, San Francisco, and Kathmandu
Mastered by Rashad Becker, Clunk, Berlin
Annotated by Drew Daniel
Photos by Farrah Skeiky
Executive producers: Maureen Loughran, John Smith, and Jonathan Williger
Production manager: Mary Monseur
Production assistant: Kate Harrington
Editorial assistance by James Deutsch
Art direction, design, and layout by Open

Special thanks to: all of the people, animals, and machines that generated the sounds we have used on this record, Moses Asch, Jonathan Williger, Cecilia Peterson, and all at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings both past and present, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bettina Richards and all at Thrill Jockey Records, Evicshen, Aaron Dilloway, Jeff Carey, Gianluca Turrini, Nikita Lavrinenko, Mickey Darius, Jon Leidecker, all our friends.

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about

Matmos Baltimore, Maryland

Experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore.

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