We are very pleased to announce that, in conjunction with the Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory, Matmos will be performing their only Southern California show this year on the campus of UC Irvine as part of the SECT seminar, sponsored by the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Matmos will be presenting new audio and video work made specifically for this concert, and will joined on the bill by Dont Rhine of Ultra-Red, presenting sections of a new work called Jack Tactic, based on AIDS activist video and House music.

Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel. They have recorded and toured with Icelandic superstar Bjork, and commited other acts of indiscretion with artists including Kid606, Bevin Belctum, Richard Chartier, Richard Devine, David Grubbs, Zeena Parkins, Otomo Yoshihide, and loads more. In their recordings and live performances over the last nine years, Matmos have used the sounds of: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, water hitting copper plates, the runout groove of a vinyl record, a $5.00 electric guitar, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, violins, rat cages, tanks of helium, violas, human skulls, cellos, peck horns, tubas, cards shuffling, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs, frequency response tests for defective hearing aids, a steel guitar recorded in a sewer, electrical interference generated by laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions and balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones on a dinner plate, Polish trains, insects, ukelele, aspirin tablets hitting a drum kit from across the room, dogs barking, people reading aloud, life support systems and inflatable blankets, records chosen by the roll of dice, an acupuncture point detector conducting electrical current through human skin, rock salt crunching underfoot, solid gold coins spinning on bars of solid silver, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal.

Formed in 1994 as a collaboration between electronic musicians and political activists, Ultra-red challenges the formalist neutrality of contemporary electronic music and sound art in general. On May 22, 1990 Dont Rhine of Ultra-red experienced his first arrest as a member of ACT UP / Los Angeles (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Fourteen years later, Jack Tactic has two questions: “What time is it?” and “Can you feel it?” Jack Tactic is a new project out of the audio activist group Ultra-red. Originally a sound art group comprised of AIDS activists, Ultra-red has over ten years taken up a variety of social struggles from housing to migration. The group has produced radio programs, installations, performances and albums released on labels such as Mille Plateaux (DE), Fat Cat (UK), Antiopic (US), Beta Bodega (US) and Sounds-Like (UK). Ultra-red’s work has historically been based on site recordings of its member’s activism. Jack Tactic opens up the range of sources to include AIDS activist videos and classic house music. Rhine premiered the first fruits of the project this summer in a tour that took him to Germany, the Balkans and India. The first Jack Tactic 12" will be released on Bottrop-Boy (DE) this autumn.