Metamatics Metaprograms Beats In The Neon Sunlight
IDM, errr, Tech-house, err, Downtempo Audio Beef Today. Metamatics shows us how manly neon can be.
'Man-Q-Neon' by Metamatics from his 1999 album Mind Mushing Git on Hydrogen Dukebox Records
For your Thank- Bob -It's-Friday pleasure, here's some sunshine music from IDM all-star Metamatics, aka Lee Norris. Originally recorded in 1999, this album was limited to 200 copies and only distributed in Scandanavia. In 2003, the UK's long-running Hydrogen Dukebox label decided it was worthy of wider release and issued it. I sure am glad they did!
I've been into Metamatics for a confusingly long time. In fact, in the days before mp3 blogs I found out about music like this by.. guessing. I would occasionally come across a realaudio sample, but they were few and far between. Metamatics is a discovery which I owe to this 1998 review (from Hyperreal.org's web-zine Reverb) of Metamatics first 12" on the seminal English label Clear Records. Clear released much of the early Metamatics work as well as innovative music from Morgan Geist and other heavyweights. I had no idea, of course, but I happened to find the CLR001 12" at In Your Ear! Records in Providence. I bought it and played it and loved it to death even though it was totally unlike any of the techno records I was playing in 1998.
It sounded a fair bit like the IDM and Ambient which db had introduced me to (instinct ambient, autechre, etc.) but something was different about it. Listen to this track and you'll understand at about 1:30. Metamatics never fails to put a smile on my face because it's intricately constructed without losing that swing. I imagine my old apartment on Brook Street in Providence, a sunny day with the windows open, reading along to their music in the sunshine.
(PS, I must push this link on you because it makes me so happy to see people take the law into their own hands. W00t.)