Monday, July 23, 2018

The Bleeding Edge: 7/23/2018

Regular readers probably know by now that, for all intents and purposes, Outsound Presents owns the “bleeding edge” this week, since this is the week of the seventeenth annual Outsound New Music Summit. There will be a concert every evening this week from Tuesday through Saturday, and tonight there will be a screening of the 2013 documentary about the New York Art Quartet, The Breath Courses Through Us. Nevertheless, there is one event that is not part of the Summit that definitely counts as a “bleeding edge” performance.

The Matmos duo (from the Facebook Event Web page)

Matmos is a duo that formed in San Francisco but is currently based in Baltimore. The performers are M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel; and they may best be described as giving real-time performances of musique concrète. They describe their sound sources as “highly unusual,” which is easily the height of understatement. Here is a list that they provided for the Facebook Event Web page created for the concert they will be giving tomorrow night: “amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, cigarettes, cards shuffling, laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions, balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones, Polish trains, insects, life support systems, inflatable blankets, rock salt, solid gold coins, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal.” Exotic as this may sound, the software they use to manipulate these sources is based on the sort of rhythms one is likely to find in electronic pop music.

This week’s concert will take place tomorrow night, July 24, beginning at 8 p.m. The performance will be held in the Osher Lecture Hall of the San Francisco Art Institute. The venue is located off of Russian Hill at 800 Chestnut Street, on the southwest corner of Jones Street. General admission will be $8, and students will be admitted for free. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an Eventbrite event page.

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