Live Review: Matmos

“We're used to playing real dives,” remarked MC Schmidt early during Matmos' set. This may be true for the experimental electronic duo, but venues such as the City Recital Hall oddly suit them. Out for the Sydney Festival, Matmos kicked off the evening with an extended version of Very Large Green Triangles from last year's rather excellent The Marriage Of True Minds LP. The song, especially live, sums up everything brilliant about Matmos – ostensibly the tune is inspired by a series of telepathy experiments the band has conducted over the past four years, but the result is a toe-tapping piece of groovy gothic electro-pop. For no matter how visceral, conceptually highbrow or experimental the group is, they never lose sight that this music should be, as is, just damn fun.

This juxtaposition between ideas continued throughout the night as the band seamlessly moved between debuting challenging new works inspired by industrial pioneers Coil (featuring video of a plumbing excavation) and casually chatting with the AV guy about lowering the lights to hide their own shame. A notable highlight was the set closer, a new song built around a metronome's constant tone. The duo built layer after layer of new rhythms and beats, ebbing and flowing around the metronome's time, moving into and out of syncopation and swung beats. A lesser band could easily have turned the affair into an atonal or abstract mess, but Matmos knew the goal here and had enough control and rhythmic mastery to make a surprisingly danceable and poppy soundscape out of the rhythms. This is exactly what the band do best; the group's recorded output is so texturally and thematically dense, all but the deftest hand would fumble a live recreation of it. Whether they're striving to intellectually challenge or entertain, the band is a constant pleasure and one we can only hope to see back soon.