Biography
Musician, writer, and academic Drew Daniel first gained recognition through the conceptual electronic projects he pursues both as one half of Matmos alongside partner M.C. Schmidt and under the solo alias the Soft Pink Truth. Early on he participated in several hardcore punk outfits and noise experiments before establishing Matmos with Schmidt during the mid-'90s; together they have issued more than a dozen albums of often playful yet provocative experimental music that relies on unorthodox sampling methods. The 2001 release A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure assembled glitch-inflected recordings of surgical operations, Ultimate Care II from 2016 assembled a continuous thirty-eight-minute composition solely from washing-machine noises, and Plastic Anniversary in 2019 extracted tones from assorted plastic items. In parallel, Daniel channels his solo efforts as the Soft Pink Truth into investigations of dance music, although those explorations have also encompassed nods to his roots in hardcore (via 2004’s Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?) and black metal (via 2014’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?). He has authored three volumes, among them the 2008 entry in the 33⅓ series devoted to Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. Under his own name he has issued joint recordings with experimental artist John Wiese, notably the glitch-laden noise of 2018’s Continuous Hole and the abrasive tape manipulations of 2023’s Through Mazes Running.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Daniel immersed himself in the local punk community during adolescence. He issued the fanzine The Conqueror Worm and performed with groups including Crain and Cerebellum while also taking part in the experimental hip-hop collective King G & the J Krew alongside musicians who later founded post-rock ensembles such as Rodan, Rachel’s, and Shipping News. His initial experimental recordings appeared under the Pope Lick moniker, captured on a defective four-track recorder. In the early ’90s he enrolled at U.C. Berkeley in California and presented solo noise performances as Western Blot. There he encountered M.C. Schmidt in San Francisco, and the pair began producing experimental electronic music collectively as Matmos, issuing the cassette In Lo-Fidelity in 1994. They joined the experimental collective Iao Core and subsequently formed the glitch project Disc with Kid606 and Lesser. Matmos unveiled their drum’n’bass-tinged self-titled debut on the independent Vague Terrain imprint in 1997, followed by the electro-acoustic experiments of Quasi-Objects (1998) and the country-inflected The West (1999), which generated unexpectedly funky grooves from sampled household objects and acoustic instruments.
Matmos attained wider visibility once Matador put out A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (2001), which incorporated samples drawn from liposuction and additional surgical procedures. The duo also toured alongside Björk and contributed to her landmark album Vespertine as well as its vocal-centric successor Medúlla. Meanwhile Daniel launched a parallel solo career centered on his interest in dance music. Using the one-off pseudonym Dry Hustle he released the single “Do It Quite Sloppily,” pitting samples of Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” against the sound of solid gold striking silver. As the Soft Pink Truth he began issuing more club-oriented though still abstract microhouse material, commencing with a run of EPs on Matthew Herbert’s Soundslike label. The debut full-length Do You Party? surfaced in 2003, after which the project shifted direction with 2004’s Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?, offering reinterpretations of tracks by punk and hardcore acts such as Angry Samoans, Minor Threat, Crass, and Nervous Gender.
Activity under the Soft Pink Truth banner then paused for more than ten years while Matmos persisted in issuing ambitious records, including 2006’s The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, a tribute to various queer historical figures. Daniel completed his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 2007, after which he and Schmidt moved to Baltimore, where he joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an associate professor. He contributed writing to Pitchfork over several years, and his volume on Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats appeared in the 33⅓ series in 2008. His second book, The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology in the English Renaissance, was released by Fordham University Press in 2013. After Matmos issued their Thrill Jockey debut The Marriage of True Minds, Daniel revived the Soft Pink Truth with 2014’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?, comprising electronic reworkings of material by black metal bands including Darkthrone, Mayhem, and Hellhammer. The digital album Why Pay More? followed in 2015, preceding another extended hiatus. Matmos delivered Ultimate Care II, centered on washing-machine-derived sounds, in 2016.
Daniel teamed with prolific noise musician John Wiese (Sissy Spacek, Bastard Noise) for the 2018 LP Continuous Hole, initially issued by Gilgongo Records. Marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of their personal and creative partnership, Daniel and Schmidt released the 2019 Matmos album Plastic Anniversary, assembled from samples of plastic items and instruments fabricated from plastic. In 2020 the Soft Pink Truth returned with Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?, an album fusing post-classical elements with ambient house and featuring guest vocalists and musicians such as Angel Deradoorian, Colin Self, and Sarah Hennies; this was quickly succeeded by the digital collection Am I Free to Go?, consisting of crust punk covers. Matmos then presented the expansive triple-album The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form, which incorporated contributions from ninety-nine guest artists including Oneohtrix Point Never, Yo La Tengo, and Mouse on Mars. A limited-edition 7" with Wiese titled Clouded Shrine appeared in 2021. Matmos’ Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, a collage-based record drawing on the music of Polish composer Bogusław Schaeffer, emerged in 2022. Daniel’s monograph Joy of the Worm: Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature was published by University of Chicago Press. Later that year two deep house-oriented Soft Pink Truth releases—the EP Was It Ever Real? and the full-length Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?—both appeared. Through Mazes Running, Daniel’s second glitch-noise collaboration with Wiese, came out on Difficult Interactions in 2023, while Continuous Hole received a CD edition from Cold Spring the same year.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Daniel immersed himself in the local punk community during adolescence. He issued the fanzine The Conqueror Worm and performed with groups including Crain and Cerebellum while also taking part in the experimental hip-hop collective King G & the J Krew alongside musicians who later founded post-rock ensembles such as Rodan, Rachel’s, and Shipping News. His initial experimental recordings appeared under the Pope Lick moniker, captured on a defective four-track recorder. In the early ’90s he enrolled at U.C. Berkeley in California and presented solo noise performances as Western Blot. There he encountered M.C. Schmidt in San Francisco, and the pair began producing experimental electronic music collectively as Matmos, issuing the cassette In Lo-Fidelity in 1994. They joined the experimental collective Iao Core and subsequently formed the glitch project Disc with Kid606 and Lesser. Matmos unveiled their drum’n’bass-tinged self-titled debut on the independent Vague Terrain imprint in 1997, followed by the electro-acoustic experiments of Quasi-Objects (1998) and the country-inflected The West (1999), which generated unexpectedly funky grooves from sampled household objects and acoustic instruments.
Matmos attained wider visibility once Matador put out A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (2001), which incorporated samples drawn from liposuction and additional surgical procedures. The duo also toured alongside Björk and contributed to her landmark album Vespertine as well as its vocal-centric successor Medúlla. Meanwhile Daniel launched a parallel solo career centered on his interest in dance music. Using the one-off pseudonym Dry Hustle he released the single “Do It Quite Sloppily,” pitting samples of Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” against the sound of solid gold striking silver. As the Soft Pink Truth he began issuing more club-oriented though still abstract microhouse material, commencing with a run of EPs on Matthew Herbert’s Soundslike label. The debut full-length Do You Party? surfaced in 2003, after which the project shifted direction with 2004’s Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?, offering reinterpretations of tracks by punk and hardcore acts such as Angry Samoans, Minor Threat, Crass, and Nervous Gender.
Activity under the Soft Pink Truth banner then paused for more than ten years while Matmos persisted in issuing ambitious records, including 2006’s The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, a tribute to various queer historical figures. Daniel completed his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 2007, after which he and Schmidt moved to Baltimore, where he joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an associate professor. He contributed writing to Pitchfork over several years, and his volume on Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats appeared in the 33⅓ series in 2008. His second book, The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology in the English Renaissance, was released by Fordham University Press in 2013. After Matmos issued their Thrill Jockey debut The Marriage of True Minds, Daniel revived the Soft Pink Truth with 2014’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?, comprising electronic reworkings of material by black metal bands including Darkthrone, Mayhem, and Hellhammer. The digital album Why Pay More? followed in 2015, preceding another extended hiatus. Matmos delivered Ultimate Care II, centered on washing-machine-derived sounds, in 2016.
Daniel teamed with prolific noise musician John Wiese (Sissy Spacek, Bastard Noise) for the 2018 LP Continuous Hole, initially issued by Gilgongo Records. Marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of their personal and creative partnership, Daniel and Schmidt released the 2019 Matmos album Plastic Anniversary, assembled from samples of plastic items and instruments fabricated from plastic. In 2020 the Soft Pink Truth returned with Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?, an album fusing post-classical elements with ambient house and featuring guest vocalists and musicians such as Angel Deradoorian, Colin Self, and Sarah Hennies; this was quickly succeeded by the digital collection Am I Free to Go?, consisting of crust punk covers. Matmos then presented the expansive triple-album The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form, which incorporated contributions from ninety-nine guest artists including Oneohtrix Point Never, Yo La Tengo, and Mouse on Mars. A limited-edition 7" with Wiese titled Clouded Shrine appeared in 2021. Matmos’ Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, a collage-based record drawing on the music of Polish composer Bogusław Schaeffer, emerged in 2022. Daniel’s monograph Joy of the Worm: Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature was published by University of Chicago Press. Later that year two deep house-oriented Soft Pink Truth releases—the EP Was It Ever Real? and the full-length Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?—both appeared. Through Mazes Running, Daniel’s second glitch-noise collaboration with Wiese, came out on Difficult Interactions in 2023, while Continuous Hole received a CD edition from Cold Spring the same year.
Albums
