The opening track of electronic duo Matmos' new album, "The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast," features the reading of a passage from Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Inventions," which suggests that if a rose is fertilized by a cow's dung, then it is not absurd to say that... well, that the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast. The text is read by Laetitia Sonami, who is occasionally interrupted by interjections from various other voices (including, at one point, Björk's), but the wonderful thing here is the ingenious, shuffling beat, made entirely from "manipulated samples of roses, teeth, cows, manure and geese." As if often the case with Matmos, the idea is gimmicky but the result transcends the gimmick.
-- T.B.
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