Drew Daniel

Drew Daniel is an academic, writer, and musician/sound artist.

Born in Montreal, Canada, he grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He received his B.A. in philosophy and English from U C Berkeley, then attended Brasenose College, Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship to get a second B.A. in English. He then returned to U C Berkeley to complete his PhD in English, where he specialized in the literature of the Renaissance period. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

With his partner M.C. Schmidt, for the last eighteen years he has been one half of the band Matmos, making conceptually oriented musique concrete and electronic pop music; together they have released over eight albums and regularly perform in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Matmos have collaborated with a broad range of musicians, including the Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, J Lesser, Rachel's, Wobbly, Zeena Parkins, Marshall Allen, So Percussion and Bjork.

In addition to numerous articles and reviews, he is the author of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, a short book about the album of the same name by the band Throbbing Gristle for Continuum's 33 1/3 series. He is currently completing a book manuscript, The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology in the English Renaissance.