"Ultimate Care II," by Matmos and a Whirlpool

There’s a new electronic album you’ll want to lose yourself in, and its star is a washing machine.

Matmos (Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt) is no stranger to using found objects as instruments over their 20-year career. Opening for Bjork at Radio City Music Hall, they played canisters of helium; at the San Francisco Art Institute, they played a cow’s uterus. On their new album, Ultimate Care II, they use the eponymous model of Whirlpool washing machine to find the energy of the everyday. Namely, laundry. The result is an electronic album that pulls you in and leaves you more aware of what music is living in your daily routine.

The album’s lead video, “Excerpt Five,” directed by Vicki Bennett and Peter Knight, is a montage of video featuring both that very Whirlpool Ultimate Care II plus other archival washing machine footage. The track is a slow, satisfying build, building a beat before dissolving it.

The more harried “Excerpt Nine,” the album’s third single, is a busy, addictive beat, at once ordered and frenetic. Its video, co-directed by husband and wife team Ed Apodaca and Lisa Berghout, finds the rhythm of the everyday, and as manic as it is, it’s a satisfying showcase of order in the chaos. Think Jonas Åkerlund’s video for Madonna’s “Ray of Light.”

The duo will play a handful of U.S. venues this spring, with more dates expected. And yes, they will schlep the washing machine onstage with with them.

March 15 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall (in the round)
March 18 – Providence, RI – Columbus Theatre
March 19 – Brooklyn, NY – National Sawdust
April 13 – Philadelphia, PA – International House

For more info, visit Matmos’s site vague-terrain.com. Tickets are available at each venue’s site. Ultimate Care II is out now, and the band requests you “matronize a local record shop” to purchase it.