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Rating: As with any respectable event, the Matmos concert in Venice also had its advance sales, and luckily, we had our spot secured for a while because a "SOLD OUT" sign outside the theater didn't promise anything good.
After the classic stop at the local hangout typical of us Venetians, we rushed to secure what would be our seats for the next hour and a half, fearing we wouldn't be able to see or, worse, hear poorly.
The first surprise was that the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove isn't that big; in fact, it's small, or rather, it's tiny. There must have been about three hundred seats, all strictly arranged in very long rows, so everyone can see and hear perfectly.
As we entered, there were already three musicians on stage, who we later discovered were members of the opening and accompanying group for Matmos. While people were taking their seats, they kept playing lightly, softly, to ease the wait.
But here we are, it's eight o'clock sharp, darkness and silence in the hall. "Good evening everyone, we are the Dick Slessig..." that's how the three figures on stage introduce themselves, and they start playing. They played and we traveled. They played and we dreamed. They played, and we got lost in a psychedelic wandering that seemed never-ending. Guitar, bass, and drums daze us and leave us alone with ourselves for twenty-three fleeting minutes of harmonic schizophrenia...
It's now half past nine and finally, directly from the audience, the American duo takes the stage. Accompanying them, as I mentioned, are guitarist Mark Lightcap and drummer Steve Goodfriend, who had already shown all their skill.
The show begins: "Thank you for being here tonight".
Martin approaches a basin of water captured by a camera and starts using a straw, blowing first hard, then softly, then inhaling, blowing again, submerging his hand in the water and playing with a little bell at the bottom. He shakes it, hits it on the basin, lets it fall into the water, and again takes the straw—all of this transmitted on a gigantic screen behind him directly from the camera. Meanwhile, Drew entertains himself by creating an icy atmosphere thanks to effects, sounds, and out-of-the-ordinary trills, while still following the rhythm set by his companion. The song changes, the atmosphere changes, the footage changes.
"I usually use this space to tell you how much I hate my country and my president," Martin tells us, general applause, but we had no doubt about their ideas.
The drummer starts playing the bass drum with sticks, but the sound is covered by beats and electronic drums; Martin starts playing that strange instrument that appears so often in their latest album and sounds somewhere between an accordion and a bagpipe. He apologizes that we won't be able to see him play because it's covered by mixers, no problem.
The songs, almost all taken from "The Civil War," alternate splendidly, the electronic sounds jolt now and then into experimental and illusory spaces, where the song formula no longer exists and music becomes the performance itself. They end soon, too soon, but in reality, seventy-five minutes have already passed, flown, chased behind the two musicians.
The applause continues to shower from every spectator and shortly after, the four musicians return to the stage.
"It's the first time someone asks us for an encore..." and we pretend to believe them as they say it, satisfied. One last song and then there's no applause strong enough, they need to rest, after all, twenty minutes later they would start all over again.
So not exactly a concert, but a theatrical show masterfully directed by those two crazy Americans; and if by chance someone should tell you "well, I didn't like them that much, too much noise and too complicated," listen to me and don't heed them... after all, not everyone can understand art.
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