One of the craziest sets I ever saw was Bjork at Coachella, 2002. Aside from some of her “hits” she got to venture into the more challenging, but also more astounding aspect of her sound. The computorized blips and ticks represented the threshold of modern music, but with an unbelievable cover of the Beatles,’ “Blue Jay Way,” she reminded us that the psychedelic past is very much connected to the freak-outs of the future. Right there on stage with the Icelandic queen, was Matmos. The duo of Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt could make music out of just about any sound, but on this new record, Supreme Balloon, the two insist that all the sounds come from inside the box; so instead being like Queen and their, “No synthesizers were used on this record,” (a rule they thankfully - yeah, I said it - broke by Hot Space) they boast that they ONLY used synths. For those of us who love the analog sounds of ’70s prog, or ’80s video game sounds, you will love this one. People would insult glitch oriented music by saying it sounds like Pong, but in this case, that is totally a compliment, and in this case, the glitch isn’t coming from fucking up the sounds in a computer, but rather from fucking up the synths with samplers.  This stuff is synth-pop but not in a danceable Giorgio Moroder way, more like electronic-pop-art, or pop-futurism. Their interpretation of Francois Couperin’s, “Les Folies Francaises,” brings you back to when Walter Charlos was new and novel…and kitschy. “Rainbow Flag” sounds quirky and exotic, like something that would fit perfectly on The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sounds Of Jean Jacques Perrey. Then there’s the little nod to Tomita’s logo. Brilliant. Then there’s the title-cut, a twenty-something-minute track track that the Orb could be jealous of, because it sounds like that Kraut-influenced ambient music he was inspired by back in Alex Paterson’s EG days. Here’s the video for “Exciter Lamp”

Here’s the band doing “Rainbow Flag”

Just in case you’re not familiar with TomitaAnd while we brought it up, here’s a scan of my Jean Jacques Perrey disc