Having previously released a song (2001’s “California Rhinoplasty”) composed almost entirely from samples of plastic surgery being performed, San Francisco duo Matmos threw themselves into the emerging folktronica scene of the early 2000s with typically anarchic glee. Drawing from both the English and American Civil Wars for inspiration, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt stitched together a strange patchwork of medieval instruments, banjo, bagpipes, marching snares and modular synths. 

While “Reconstruction”’s glitching military tattoo gives way to some blissful Appalachian reveries, and “For The Trees” languidly stutters in its own beautiful way, elsewhere the likes of “Zealous Order of Candied Knights” (The Wicker Man soundtracked by Throbbing Gristle) and “The Struggle Against Unreality Begins”’ clanking death march are ripe with folk horror and unsettling sonic terror.

If contemporaries Four Tet and Bibio were combining modern-day technology with bucolic acoustic textures to discover fresh musical utopias, here Matmos were plundering transatlantic folk traditions like two techno Dr. Frankensteins, stitching them into warped new forms.