Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure

Matmos | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 13, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Matador Records
• ASIN: B000059N62
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,028 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are sounds inherently... icky?, May 17, 2001

By 

Ryan Hennessy (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (Audio CD)

You've played songs on your teeth before. Admit it. Everyone has. You'll get bored, start fiddling with parts of your face, and end up clicking your teeth with your fingernails, making rudimentary percussion versions of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or something by opening and closing your mouth to change the pitch. Well, apparently Matmos likes doing this too, and that's essentially the idea behind A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure.

Forget for a moment that they went out of their way to record some of the most morbid objects for their songs and appreciate the fact that Matmos can use complete non-instruments and coax some of the most musical sounds from them, and make textures that range from the horrifying "For Felix" to the funky "Lipostudio." Electronic musicians have always loved using non-musical intruements in their recordings, but seldom do they use them are more than a quirky 4/4 beat. Matmos finds the essence of the objects and creates a song for them.

Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel went into (of all places) the operating room to record much of this record. The record features the sounds of scalpels through flesh, fat being sucked through a liposuction tube, the buzz of eye surgery lasers and accupuncture point detectors, tones used for hearing aid tests, human and goat bones and a rat cage. And yes, they even use teeth on one song, althrough their not their own teeth. They belonged to some dead guy.

This record brings up several interesting questions. Do objects like skulls and scalpels have an inherently sick sound to them, or if you listened to this record without knowing how it was made, would you just think it's regular electronic mumbo-jumbo. Certainly some of that depends on how edited the sound is, if it can be identified or not. A lot of the sounds have to be pitch shifted and changed to make music. Another question it raises is what exactly is a music instrument. We're at a point now where if you have the computing and mixing skills, you can make an instrument out of anything, as Matmos demonstrates. The record also shows that you don't even need engineering skills to make something of nothing. In "Lipostudio" Stephen Thrower plays a clarinet, and Schmidt blows through a straw into water, and almost the same effect is achieved with each. They get both to sound like a combination of a horn sound with the flesh sounds.

Another question is "Would these songs stand on their own if they were made traditionally." The entire record is interesting, but why? Is it just because I know that they're playing a goat spine to get a beat? I really can't answer this question, but knowing what I know certainly makes the record more enjoyable. One song that would stand up well is "For Felix (And All The Rats)." It sounds like a cacophony of violins playing out of tune, then in the middle there is what sounds like the sound of a prepared xylophone or something being struck, until it all comes crashing together in what sounds like a wild animal attacking you. To read that all of this made by plucking a rat cage and playing it with a bow seems insane. The fact that they did it is pure genius. By playing the steel bars of the cage with a bow, they managed to coax out a sound that's simulaneously a violin, a horn and a whimpering animal. Absolutely beautiful.

Don't get the wrong idea. This isn't an entirely dark album. "Spondee" is a playful song built over a speech record of phonetically balanced words, with equal stress on the first and second syllable (lunchbox, playground, raincoat). This makes the perfect beat for a surprisingly dancey song. The next song is a less bouncy but still danceable song made solely from the clicks generated from a accupunture point detector. Somehow, "Ur Tchun Tan Tse Qi" is a throbbing and droning song made out of sounds from a skull, teeth and a goat spine. The only real instrument on the final track is a nose flute. The rest was recorded during cosmetic surgeries in California. And it's never less than interesting.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully Different, August 31, 2001

By 

E. Frampton "Parandot" (Wexford, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (Audio CD)

As a celebrated cynic among my friends, I have grown tired of electronic music in it's current form, all the trance, all the mediocrity. Don't get me wrong, there are a few gems here and there, this album of course being one of them. I own the other Matmos albums, I'm not a die-hard follower of Matmos, but I respect their originality and the obvious gift they have for rhythm. An album containing numerous samples of medical procedures does sound like a cheap novelty record designed for attention. But, that quickly fades within the first listen. Their quirky sense of rhythm shows itself time and time again throughout the record. Spondee starts out slow, but then becomes this insanely catchy little number. For Felix (and all the rats) is a surprisingly emotional song; it all becomes clear after reading the liner notes. In a stagnant mediocre electronic music landscape, Matmos is an oasis of creativity. My bad poetic analogies aside. It's quirky, catchy, and just good fun with a little liposuction thrown in.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars music is the medicine, May 4, 2001

By 

Matthew D. Mercer (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (Audio CD)

California based duo Matmos have come a long way certainly. It wasn't until the release of "The West" that they really grew to accommodate their potential as a force in electronic music. Prior to that their releases like "Quasi-objects," while rewarding on a listening level, seemed too pre-occupied with their own sampling novelty.

"A Chance to Cut" is not too different in that respect, since the majority of the hubbub is based around its sampling premise: medical equipment and operations. And yes, the premise does become somewhat subversive, since when you hear a strange squelching noise on the first track and then you make the connection with the title "Liposuction," even the most adjusted listener will most likely squirm a bit.

However, what Matmos has done with this release is create a product much greater than the sum of its parts. Never do they abandon the quirky pinache that characterizes the majority of their work, a quality that appears again and again, whether in the form of funky house on "Spondee" (a track based on two-syllable words, in which neither syllable holds an emphasis) or the goofy melodies of "California Rhinoplasty" or "Memento Mori." Still, "For Felix" transcends kitsch and becomes a sort of agitated elegy through its bowed overtones (using a rat cage as the source material).

Through its seven tracks (some of them quite lengthy), "A Chance to Cut" never grows tiresome, as each track explores different territory while the premise holds them together as an album. Highly, highly recommended!!