Matmos

I think I had already written about 80% of Vespertine and had done the beats and the skeleton with programmers. Because it was the first time I did microbeats, I felt that some of them were a little bit wooden and that I needed somebody who was a bit of a virtuoso in the field. So, I had been in touch with Matmos, they had already done remixes for me and we had met and had gotten drunk together, so I called them up and I asked them (as I had almost finished Vespertine) if they would be up for doing a tour with me as I was starting to worry about how we were gonna play these beats that were made out of teaspoons hitting a box, not proper instruments, how were we going to play that live ? Because I did a lot of the beats myself I wasn’t going to be able to do them whilst I was busy singing. Also, I love seeing people live who aren’t doing what people have told them to do, it’s their world. So I called them up in November 2000 and asked them to do the tour with me. I asked them to do 27 tracks for me, which would be not only Vespertine but other stuff from other albums and make new beats for all of them. I didn’t want them to use proper instruments for this, but a different angle. They thought about this for a bit and then they came back and said "Yes !" to my surprise, and I was thrilled.

Then I was doing the album, and I knew that we were missing some stuff from several songs so I said ’Would it be okay to send you some songs, I know it’s very late in the process as we are going to mix it in two months, so would it be alright to ask you if you could add some stuff to the songs’ ? and they said ’Yes, why not’. So, I sent the tracks to San Francisco, which is where Matmos added some more beats to it. I guess the role in Vespertine is like when you get session musicians and you get a percussionist and the drummer had already laid down the beats but you need the sparkle to bring it to life, which can completely change the track but its necessary as decoration.

We then did a tour together for a year, which was great fun and Matmos then took the tracks a lot further. Even though the tracks still aren’t a Matmos sound, they have progressed over the tour, which is very exciting. It seems that now we have got to know each other well enough to just jump into a studio and start from scratch. Now they are more like equals.

David Toop Interview, 2002