Matmos - “Why?“ (feat. Evicshen) (Official Music Video)

“Why?,” from Matmos’s album ’Return to Archive,’ features sounds of humans trying to communicate with animals (dolphins, frogs) and other humans (children, people without larynxes) over a hasty four-on-the-floor beat. Matmos and guest artist Evicshen cut, loop, and layer 92 frog-patterns, compress the splashes of dolphins in water, and lock slices of enigmatic vocal experiments into pulsing, mutating loops. Directed by Ed Apodaca Purchase/Stream: Smithsonian Folkways: Bandcamp: All other platforms: In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album Return to Archive, which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways. On just the album’s first track, dolphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers co-mingle in a fantasia of sound both everyday and extraordinary. Each track on Return to Archive morphs its source material into something completely unexpected, honoring and expanding on Folkways’ legacy of sonic exploration. Featuring Evicshen and Aaron Dilloway. Matmos: Facebook: Twitter: Drew Daniel: M.C. Schmidt: Instagram: Smithsonian Folkways: Facebook: Twitter: Instagram: The content and comments posted here are subject to the Smithsonian Institution copyright and privacy policy (). Smithsonian reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove any content at any time. #Matmos #SmithsonianFolkways