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Release Date: 26 January 2024
Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 093074026120
Genres: Electronic Experimental
Release Date: 03 May 2024
Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Packaging Type: Slip Sleeve (CD or Vinyl)
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 093074026113
Genres: Electronic Experimental
Description
'Return to Archive', Matmos' 14th album, is constructed entirely from the "non-musical" recordings released by Folkways Records in the mid-20th century. It contains sounds sourced from dozens of LPs, from Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Sounds of Insects to Voices of Satellites, Sounds of Medicine to Sounds of the Junk Yard. Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt were given unprecedented access to the label's fabled archive at the Smithsonian Institution and encouraged to repurpose and rework the source material however they liked. The resulting album illuminates the radical, inquisitive, and poetic aspects of the original recordings, extracting the latent moments of creative revelation on records intended primarily for the backroom shelves of universities and libraries. Some tracks cycle through source material at a rate of dozens of samples per minute, while others sit with specific recordings for their duration. Released to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of Folkways Records by Moses Asch and Marian Distler, 'Return to Archive' is a whimsical, entrancing, and at times unsettling traversal of what Asch called the "World of Sound."
Description
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.
Tracklisting
Tracklisting
Bessie Jones, John Davis & The Georgia Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell & Ed Young
Sonya Cohen Cramer
Various
Ann Savoy
Charlie Parr
Mariachi Los Camperos
Matmos
Aga Khan Master Musicians
Gordan
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith
Nurse With Wound
Mieko Shimizu
Filax Stael
The Residents
Fernando Perdomo and Matt Tecu
Bill Gould / Jared Blum
