Intelligent dance music duo, Matmos, will release a new album, Ultimate Care II, on February 19, 2016. Ultimate Care II was created entirely through samples of sounds generated from a Whirlpool Ultimate Care washing machine found in Matmos‘s basement of their Baltimore home.
Several of Matmos‘s previous albums follow the same foundational structure. Former albums have been created through the sampling of medical procedures, the percussive sounds of a rat cage, Civil War folk songs and even parapsychological experiments.
Band members, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, sought help from local musicians including Dan Deacon, Jason Willett of Half Japanese, Max Eilbacher and Sam Haberman of Horse Lords, and Duncan Moore from Needle Gun in order to capture the sounds of the washing machine. They physically played the machine like a drum, processed its audio, or sent MIDI data to samplers.
Reports say, the album cover was made by New York artist, Ted Mineo, using digitally manipulated photographs of the Baltimore basement washing machine.
Listen to an excerpt from the LP below.