Matador Records
2001
A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure
About This Album
Watching plastic surgery procedures requires a brave heart (or at least a strong stomach): It's equally chilling and fascinating to see the body cut open, invaded, and manipulated with cold machinery in pursuit of aesthetic perfection. Of course, there's a parallel between the way plastic surgeons reshape humans to conform to some ideal and the way other artists sculpt their ideas into something distinctive or beautiful. Matmos' fourth album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure makes that connection in the most literal, explicit way: The duo, brave of heart and strong of stomach (and both doctors' sons), recorded the snips, clicks, snaps, and squelches of various surgical procedures, then nipped and tucked them into seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno. Though the source material has been recontextualized into music, it doesn't escape its origins; you can take the sounds out of the surgery, but you can't really take the surgery out of the sounds. The jaunty "Lipostudio (And So On)" recalls Mouse on Mars' bouncy electronic pop, but realizing that the song's cheery-sounding squelches come from body fat being sucked through a tube makes for queasy listening.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 5)

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