25th anniversary deluxe reissue of To Live and Shave in L.A.'s "The Wigmaker in Eighteenth- Century Williamsburg." in an expanded 4LP box set. The four LPs contain all 27 tracks from the original “Wigmaker” double CD remastered for vinyl, including complete lyrics, original liner notes & production credits, plus an entire LP side of unreleased songs from the original 1996 version of the album. The set also includes a 36-page perfect-bound book with never- before-seen photos, a critical appreciation by Matmos’ Drew Daniel, and a 10,000 word oral history of the five year period 1995-2000 that bandleader Tom Smith worked on Wigmaker, including interviews with the band, the label, the many guest musicians, and friends and co-conspirators like Aaron Dilloway, Jim O’Rourke and others.
Because everything wouldn't fit in the 4LP box, there's a FIFTH LP. Packaged "Two Virgins" style in a brown paper wrapper due to its frank depiction of the human form, this bonus long player has the remaining five unreleased songs from the original sessions not included in the box. Buy it in a bundle with the 4LP box. Up for preorder now, the whole set ships April 10th 2025 on what would have been Tom Smith’s 69th birthday.
"A gloriously hostile masterpiece whose time has come... The product of five years of jamming, equipment mooching, couch- surfing, and marathon self-editing, the record is at once supremely out of control and structured to the tiniest detail." — Drew Daniel
"An ambitious marriage of ass-shaking rock dynamics, hard disk manipulation, ‘sound on sound’ concrete architecture and industrial strength electronics... Intellectually savage" — David Keenan, The Wire
"A truly great album... totally convinced of its own necessity and complete in its absurdity. From the perplexing cover art to its utterly indigestible length, there is no wink or nudge to suggest this is an elaborate put-on, no window left open to the real world... 8.5" — Jason Nickey, Pitchfork
"This wildly inaccessible group specializes in gargled, tangled constructions that gesture (violently, if mystifyingly) toward something more familiar: rock ‘n’ roll." — Kelefa Sanneh, New York Times
