American experimental electronic musician, producer, and composer.
Born: 1964.
M.C. Schmidt is best known as one half of an acclaimed duo
Matmos. He also used to be an assistant manager of the New Genres Department at San Francisco Art Institute, where Martin taught people to edit video and use necessary lighting and sound equipment, and also maintained a small computer lab. In the eighties, Schmidt played in a legendary occult-avantgarde band
Iao Core. He also collaborated with
Kris Force (of
Amber Asylum), and played synthesizer on a few
Frozeninamber tracks.
Martin met
Drew Daniel around 1989 at Uranus, a gay bar in San Francisco, where Drew worked as a go go dancer. Prior to that, Daniel saw Schmidt playing with IAO Core at San Francisco Art Institute's event at San Francisco Art Institute. Eventually the two started dating and formed the
Matmos band together – named after a 'seething lake of evil slime' beneath the Sogo city in the film "Barbarella (1968).
After making music together privately for a few years, in 1997 Drew and Martin established San Francisco Art Institute label and self-released their debut album "Matmos" (1997). Since then, the duo have released over ten albums, as well as numerous collaborations and EPs on many labels, including San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, and other independent labels.
As half of Matmos, Schmidt has worked with
Terry Riley,
Kronos Quartet,
Peter Rehberg, San Francisco Art Institute,
Rrose,
Marshall Allen,
Horse Lords,
Vicki Bennett (
People Like Us),
Keith Fullerton Whitman,
Antony Hegarty,
William Basinski, and many others. For many years, Matmos had been collaborating with Icelandic artist
Björk, producing several remixes, and later contributed to a few of her albums. Schmidt and Daniel accompanied Björk on Vespertine World Tour (2001) and Greatest Hits Tour (2003) as part of her live band. In 1997-1998, Daniel Schmidt recorded several glitch albums with
Miguel Depedro (
Kid606) as
Disc.
In 2009, Schmidt hosted a series of improvisational sessions with
Lisle Ellis, a veteran jazz basist who have played with
Cecil Taylor,
Fred Frith,
John Zorn, and the likes, and
Jason Willett (
1/2 Japanese) at his home in Baltimore. A newly formed
Instant Coffee! trio saw Ellis exploring the electroacoustic combination of traditional jazz techniques with real-time computer processing, Schmidt playing the usual variety of bizarre percussion, non-musical objects and synthesizers, and Jason Willett jamming on contact mic'ed rubber band, Sidrassi Organ, and custom-made electronic instruments. The sessions were documented on "Instant Coffee! (2010), a limited edition album on San Francisco Art Institute's San Francisco Art Institute sublabel.
Schmidt released his first solo album "Batu Malablab" (2015), recorded on prepared piano, Chinese flute, Roland SH-101, Roland V-Synth, T.C. Helicon VoiceLive II, and other machines. It features
Wobbly and
Thomas Dimuzio on miscellaneous synthesizers and electronics, Batu Malablab presents an original gamelan-inspired experimental take on Jon Hassell's "Fourth World" and other Western cosmopolitan renditions of non-western world music.
He also made a soundtrack to a Jeffrey Rettberg's 27-min film, "Devotion" (2017).
