''A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure'' is the fourth studio album by American

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

duo

Matmos Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore. M. C. (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their per ...

, released in 2001. The album consists primarily of samples of medical procedures, including plastic surgeries,

liposuction Liposuction, or simply lipo, is a type of fat-removal procedure used in plastic surgery. Evidence does not support an effect on weight beyond a couple of months and does not appear to affect obesity-related problems. In the United States, lipo ...

s, hearing tests and bonesaws. The album maintains a sense of humour in contrast with the serious nature of the audio being sampled. The exception to the medical samples is the song "For Felix (And All the Rats)", a piece dedicated to their deceased pet rat Felix, performed entirely on his cage. The two members of Matmos, Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt, both had doctors as parents, a fact that likely influenced them in the album's creation. The album is sometimes considered a concept album within the

glitch A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, ...

genre.

Critical reception

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, ''A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure'' received an average score of 80 based on 13 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Heather Phares of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

described the album as "seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno."

Simon Reynolds Simon Reynolds (born 19 June 1963) is an English music journalist and author who began his professional career on the staff of ''Melody Maker'' in the mid-1980s. He has since gone on to freelance and publish a number of full-length books on music ...

of ''

Spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning * Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis * Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...

'' said, "Matmos have captured with discomforting vividness the sheer surrealism of the modern vanity industry, the medieval tortures people gladly endure in pursuit of physical perfection." In 2017, ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...

'' placed ''A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure'' at number 19 on its list of "The 50 Best IDM Albums of All Time".

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from liner notes. Matmos * M. C. Schmidt – straw and water (1), acoustic guitar (1), electric guitar (1, 3), voice (1, 3), test tones (3), synthesizer (3), acupuncture point detector (4), skin (4), plucked and bowed rat cage (5), sequencing (5, 7), human skull (6), goat spine (6), teeth (6), flute (7), computer (7), mixing * Drew Daniel – voice (1), electric guitar (1, 3), sound effects (3), digital editing, sequencing, sampling, editing, mixing, recording Additional musicians * Katie Williams – voice (1) *

J Lesser J Lesser is the stage name for Jason Doerck (born December 19, 1970). Between 2003 and 2006 Doerck was a member of the defunct laptop group Sagan, alongside Blevin Blectum, Wobbly, and video artist Ryan Junell. Early years Born and raised arou ...

– voice (1) * Blevin Blectum – voice (1) *

Felix Kubin Felix Kubin (born Felix Knoth; 1969 in Hamburg), is an electronic musician, composer, curator, sound and radio artist. He runs the record label Gagarin Records. Life Kubin began his musical career at the age of eight with piano and electronic ...

– voice (1) *

Hrvatski Croatian (; ' ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and other neighboring countries. It is the official an ...

– voice (1) * Miguel De Pedro – voice (1) * Stefanie Ressin – voice (1) * Richard Von Der Schulenburg – voice (1) * Katerina Von Ledersteger-Goodfriend – voice (1) * Kevin Ambrosini – voice (1) * Ethel Chang – voice (1) * Joanne Feinstein – voice (1) * Quang Hong – voice (1) * David Hornung – voice (1) * Emily Hsu – voice (1) * Matt Kaufman – voice (1) * Daisy Kent – voice (1) * Blake Linney – voice (1) * Junn-Francis Masongsong – voice (1) * Lee Medoff – voice (1) * Jerome Narvaez – voice (1) * Ryan Petersen – voice (1) * Brian Schultz – voice (1) * Cody Shedd – voice (1) * Robert Sproul – voice (1) * Jennifer Tom – voice (1) * Nicole Williamson – voice (1) *

Stephen Thrower Stephen Thrower (born 9 December 1963) is an English musician and author. Musical career Early career In 1980, Thrower formed the group Possession with Victor Watkins and Anna Virginia War and they released the album ''The Thin White Arms, Obtu ...

– clarinet (1) * Steve Goodfriend – drums (1) * Mark Lightcap – electric guitar (1), ukulele (3) * Rebecca Highlander – voice (3)

References

External links

*
''A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure''
at

Brainwashed Brainwashed may refer to: *Brainwashing, to affect a person's mind by using extreme mental pressure or any other mind-affecting process Music Albums * Brainwashed (George Harrison album), ''Brainwashed'' (George Harrison album), 2002, or the ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, A 2001 albums Matmos albums Matador Records albums Works about plastic surgery