What to do with an album which fails to assert itself onto you. When you have respect for an artist's music you find yourself searching within it, grasping at phrases and sounds which never quite bypass your mind and mingle directly with your emotion. Perhaps, if the quality is seen but not felt, the release should be filed away, but that doesn't silence the nagging doubt that you've missed something; that it's not the music that is incomplete but your appreciation of it. To me 'Treasure State' is this kind of release.
Matmos are a little flat here, reserved maybe. At times they create well but what they hold in character they lack in weight, perhaps out of deference for So Percussion's part in the proceedings; a smorgasbord of unsurprisingly percussive elements through which, whilst enjoyable to hear (the steel drum openings in particular), there always lingers a sense of something missing, an empty seat or a unifying idea which could pull the whole project together into something more timeless. That is an unfair criticism, as these records have their place in the fabric of musical culture, but you can't help hear that missing element, long for it to appear. I'm left with the feeling of witnessing the selection of a palette, a laying out of the tools - not that the music is demo-like, it just feels like suggestions rather than resolutions, with lots of avenues open but none walked down far enough. A curious feeling when you are presented with eight tracks of undoubtedly finished material.
Essentially non-essential but well worth a listen, 'Treasure State' recalls an instrumental Super Furry Animals less familiar with the Beach Boys, and holds a fascinating missing element - something I last experienced listening to the Sparklehorse and Fennesz collaboration, 'Fishtank'.