Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dont miss out on this, 4 Sep 2001
For anyone whose interest in music extends a bit beyond the norm this album makes for essential listening. Using samples taken from medical science (most prominently plastic surgery) Matmos have created an album that is both conceptually and musically strong. From clinically tight beats and cut ups to emotive and organic sound structures this album remains listenable at all times, with a great ear for rhythm and melody. If you are a fan of the music of warp records or are keen to try something off the beaten track you must but this album. You will not be disappointed. This album is a work of genius.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Marvel, 26 Sep 2008
So who/what are Matmos? Let's look at the sleeve of 'A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure:' writing far too small to read without an arc-lamp and strange pictures of forceps, stanley-knife blades and a woman with a mutant eye. Maybe that's significant. The back of the cd case has a bit of bacon, two kidneys and a tapeworm (dissected).
The whole package design looks like the title-sequence of Cronenbergs 'Dead Ringers', but there's nothing clinical about the sound. Being antiseptically procedural doesn't rile a Matmos.
'A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure' is electro-music, pre-occupied with the clanking and hissing of the (strangely inspirational) operating theatre. It's easy to deconstruct, deadly simple to lay down its parts. It's the sight and sound of fresh, shiny blood being washed down a white china sluice. "Now count down with me ..10, 9, 8..." Sharp as a suture needle, surgically spirited etc. In a phrase: It is the machine that goes "PING!"
So who/what are Matmos? They're slightly Can in a dementedly experimental phase, slightly Kraftwerk in a 'everybody-eventually-descends-from Kraftwerk' sense, and mightily 23 Skidoo - that 'Seven Songs' masterwork raises it's truculent head yet again, over and beyond what-we've-dared-NOT-to expect.
'Memento Mori' is the tale of a toothbrush rattling in it's beaker, then someone serenely constructs a rabbit-hutch. I had a rabbit called Harold and I wept for weeks when he died. Is it you Harold? Is it really you...?
'Spondee' is one of those toddler education aids. Hear a word, press a button, bit of disco. Surprising.
So who/what are Matmos? The bit that's come into review-space now is 'Ur Tchun Tan Tsi Qi' (VERY strange my spellchecker hasn't rejected any of these words) and it is bleeping and squeaking deep under the skin of my 3:00am. I am SO tempted to hang my policy and read a couple other reviews, to see what more lateral thinking reviewers have come up with; to see if any of them has spotted the sample off the 'Shockwaves' soundtrack - but that'd seriously dilute the fun of Matmos. That'd only be cheating myself.
The final incision is 'California Rhinoplasty'. The Clangers are on that delightful little scarred planet, David Lynch is blowing down something and there's a train I think, a little steam train....
'A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure' is something I realise/ponder every time I re-read one of my Amazon reviews, and you can tell from the concise and precise way I've tackled it, I'm fully sympathetic to it's furiously acidic geotaxis. It's fusive shimmer. It's scalpel-scar numbness.
And yes, 'rhinoplasty' DID knobble my spellchecker.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An intriguing release, 13 April 2001
By A Customer
This CD is largely constructed from samples of plastic surgery operations performed in California. So you'd expect the music to head off in the direction of Coil, Nurse with Wound or Scraping Foetus of the Wheels. But instead most of it is quite light and poppy and not dissimilar to recent work by Mouse on Mars; slightly kitch, catchy tunes (sort of) and nice shiny surfaces. Locating the sounds of plastic surgery - and thus plastic surgery itself - within the parameters of superficial throw away popular culture is, I suppose, the point and makes for an intriguing listen. I have really enjoyed playing the CD, one or two others that I have it played it to, whilst enjoying the sound, have found it gross. You choose.
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