Justin Patrick Moore
Enter a Library of Babel from the masters of the electronic concept album, as they plunder the plethora of “sound” albums released by the maverick founder of Folkways, Moses Asch.
birdspanker
Matmos are skilled at making bouncy beats out of strange sound sources and there's plenty of that here. However the best parts are when they stretch out into abstract textures, such as they do in the title track. Many beautiful moments...
Favorite track: Return to Archive.
petnoodle
I saw these guys perform tracks from/related to this record at the Hirschhorn museum and it was one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever experienced. What a fun record.
Favorite track: The Way Japanese Beetles Sound To A Rose.
clover
sounds-of-life collage with emotional gravity and narrative rhythm. music or noise??? both, in the best way possible
Favorite track: Mud-Dauber Wasp.
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.
Experimental hip-hop beats and meditative arrangements abound on this original soundtrack, the producer's first release in nearly a decade. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 3, 2019