Matmos with Leprechaun Catering, Music Gallery, Toronto
A Music Gallery show in the summer means a lot of sweat. Last night, the four fans on the vaulted ceiling of St. George the Martyr Church couldn’t do much against the humidity, the heat of roughly 130 people and myriad electronic gear of two Baltimore-based groups.
Leprechaun Catering played a three-song set of their transistor fist-fight musique concrète. Tom, the group’s theremin player, announced that they didn’t have songs, but they did have song titles. The night’s titles were acronyms of Toronto: Therefore Our Rap Opera Needs Tighter Oratorios and Thirty Odd Romulans On Nitrous Terrified Ohura [sic]— “that one is an inside joke.”
The bonus song—which Tom wasn’t sure if they should play as he feared it would offend the audience of Canadians—was a leftfield version of Rush’s Tom Sawyer on theremin, bass and some single-string or rubber-band instrument. Supposedly they had the Can-con classic well rehearsed months ago, but their latest performance was pretty raw.
Matmos’s set was indeed “a placid, psychedelic sit-down affair,” but sublimely so, with hints of their newer Norman McLaren-inspired work, their porn soundtrack material and Civil War-based tracks. Their final song started with Martin Schmidt of Matmos and Tom from Leprechaun Catering on two grand pianos and culminated with both bands working a dissonant freak-out.
With the show over, everyone could head out too cool off in the night air.