Long in the making, Treasure State is a startling collaboration between two rogue American groups: Known for playing the music of Steve Reich, David Lang, and Paul Lansky, Brooklyn-based quartet So Percussion are acknowledged virtuoso performers of classical and avant-garde writing for percussion, and are increasingly recognized as composers in their own right. Musique-concrete oddballs brought into the mainstream by their collaboration with Bjork, Baltimorean electronic duo Matmos are infamous for turning bizarre sound sources (from plastic surgery to live snails) into shuffling rhythmic pop.

These groups share a love of propulsive musical experiment. The resulting collaborative album is a checkerboard of Matmos and So Percussion compositions, but in each case these ensembles have reinforced each other's techniques and methodologies. The core of the CD is a series of studies of the musical resources of everyday and not-so-everyday elemental materials: ceramic planters, pails of water, aluminum beer cans, cactus needles, cans of house paint. The result is a richly diverse yet highly listenable CD that flows across a range of genres, sound sources, objects and styles to create an elemental American landscape.

This is So Percussion's first collaborative release with electronic duo Matmos, though the two groups have been working and performing together for several years.

Contents:
1. Treasure
2. Water
3. Needles
4. Cross
5. Shard
6. Swamp
7. Aluminium
8. Flame

“Both Matmos and So Percussion share an uncanny ear for textures, and on Treasure State, it is nearly impossible to separate out where one group's contributions begin and the other's end - it all coalesces into an engaging swirl of pinprick detail…Together, they make music of such heightened awareness to detail that it makes you almost hear your own pulse.” – Pitchfork

“…The attraction here…is the combined group’s constantly shifting, variegated texture. Its instrumentation includes typewriter, amplified cactus, fish toy, animal sounds, splashing water and paper being crinkled, along with guitars, trumpets, SO’s percussion instruments and Matmos’s samplers and synthesizers. …It is the arrangement and imaginative juxtaposition of familiar instrumental timbres with splashing, crinkling and other exotic noises that makes these pieces so irresistible and entrancing.” – New York Times