Matmos Live MP3s

Late last year, the San Francisco-based electronic duo Matmos took over a gallery in the city’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and turned it into its studio, complete with throw rug, piano, computers and all manner of lo-fi noisemakers. For most of a month, Matmos (the pair of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel) showed up at the gallery-turned-studio as if it were a culture factory, a workplace, and made music while museum-goers wandered through. Most nights, they invited musician friends to drop by and jam. A baker’s dozen of those jams now appear for free download as a package of MP3 files on the group’s website (brainwashed.com/matmos), featuring them playing with Coelacanth; Sagan; J Lesser and Vickie Bennett (under the DISC moniker); Kendra Juul and Phatima and the Stud Middle Eastern Drum Ensemble; Sutekh and Safety Scissors; Wobbly and Thomas Dimuzio; and Wobbly and People Like Us. Particularly recommended are (1) the DISC track, which despite its meager substance (“As ever, it’s just compact discs skipping,” reads an accompanying note), churns richly, and (2) the Phatima track, which mixes live percussion and dark, treated piano. (Also, this is the first Disquiet.com posting in over two months. Apologies for the unintended hiatus.)