Throughout their career, American electronic music duo and frequent Björk collaborators Matmos have displayed a mean penchant for conceptual instrumentation. Since their breakout, A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, whose sounds were strictly comprised of surgical and otherwise biological noises, the duo has sought out increasingly leftfield found sounds and subject matter with each passing album. The outre sources of instrumentation and the stories behind the recording of 2006's The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast were sometimes more interesting than the actual music. Details emerging about the latest album, Supreme Balloon, elicited more than a few chuckles. This time, Matmos set out to make a record strictly out of synthesizers, the only catch (a very small one) being that they couldn't use microphones. "Group makes album with actual instruments" is not always news, but for Matmos it meant a chance to ease the reigns a little and have some fun. So the concept is that there is no concept...

Lead track "Rainbow Flag" is a bossanova jaunt with a whirling, bubbly synth line. The chord progression freezes during the track's midsection for a lengthy series of exploratory keyboard solos that manage to wander around the main theme a bit without meandering. "Polychords" follows with a stiff, stomping beat straddling the fence between hip hop and house. Synth blurts abound, playing less of a melodic role than a percussive one. "Mister Mouth" features a rad solo on a breath controlled oscillator played by Sun Ra cohort and successor Marshall Allen. Of course, the true centerpiece here is the proverbial sidelong title track. "Supreme Balloon" takes flight on a gaggle of airy synths, anchored by a pulsing low end bass note, rising to a frenetic double time crescendo, before dissolving into an sedate synthetic tabla and keyboard jam. The album closes with a short ambient comedown jam that hits the spot after the title track's harrowing climax.

The one misstep here is a cover of French baroque composer François Couperin's "Les Folies Francaises." It’s really only problematic because it shows its seams. Supreme Balloon is clearly and heavily indebted to the early purveyors of electronic music, in style and in form. Part of the reason for that is that one of the self imposed restrictions during recording was the purposeful use of dated synthesizers. But where other tracks use, say, the work of Kraftwerk as a launchpad and dive off into something original, "Folies" just goes ahead and rips off Wendy Carlos's electronic classical experiments of the late 1960s. And this is not to mention that thematically speaking, "Folies" sticks out like a sore thumb. Two minutes of classical in the middle of a sea of wacky electronic lysergic excursions? Weird.

Supreme Balloon is by and large a playful affair. Many of the tracks here, "Rainbow Flag" especially, sound oddly reminiscent of cartoon theme songs and video game music. You could almost call it the Matmos children's album. Balloon finds the group moving slowly away from their longstanding musique concrete fetish and into more hooky, if adventurous territory. The formless, anything goes structure of many of the songs is a perfect match for the freewheeling joie de vivre that pulses out of the music. For the first time in a while, Matmos's music feels played rather than constructed. It's a step in the right direction.

-Craig Jenkins