Beef Terminal
Beef Terminal

Toronto's MD Matheson has been making ambient/electronic/post-rock instrumental guitar music under the name Beef Terminal since 1995. Starting with low key indie releases (1995's cassette only release Old Mill/Claire) and eventually signing with Toronto's renowned home of all "beautiful music", Noise Factory Records (first home of Broken Social Scene, BSS splinter band KC Accidental, NAW, Sparrow Orange, Robin Judge and Tinkertoy) in 2000, Beef Terminal released the influential ambient/electronic guitar based album 20 GOTO 10. The album was a perfect introduction to the looping guitar sounds and galloping beats that have now become Beef Terminal's trademark. The album made waves on campus radio in Canada, as well as selling well in Germany, Spain, France and Japan. 2002 saw the followup to 20 GOTO 10 when The Grey Knowledge was released in July of that year. Continuing on the feel of 20 GOTO 10 yet with more sophistication, Beef Terminal marked this release by playing the first ever live shows to support the project. Using programmed beats and live and looping guitar, the music quickly enthralled those who saw it performed, both confounding and exciting them that all this music was being played live by one person. In late 2003 Noise Factory released The Isolationist, and it marked a newer more mature direction, which was greeted ecstatically by music fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Sales in Canada, the United States, Germany, France, Spain and Japan hit new highs, and the album became a staple of Canadian Campus Radio for 2004, eventually earning the #32 spot of 2004 as one of the most played records of the year. Late in 2004 a b-side and unreleased material limited edition album Crosscheck and Departure was released on smaller Hamilton indie label Worthy Records. 2006 will see an increase in the volume of touring done by Beef Terminal, and a October 18th 2005 release date has been set for the brand new Beef Terminal offering Anger Do Not Enter, released on Noise Factory Records.

Selected Reviews: 

"After blissfully sinking his emotional electronic sound to the deepest centre of a lonely heart on 2003's The Isolationist, it seems Mike Matheson, the man behind Toronto's Beef Terminal, is coming up for air on Anger Do Not Enter. Matheson's renewed interest in cut-up-style beats and burbling, fluid melodies harkens back to his earlier affairs, but the ghostly feelings and six-string plucking that informed The Isolationist are still lurking about, making Anger an intermittently eerie and uplifting amalgamation of Beef Terminal's different styles. In addition, there's a subtle intensity running throughout Anger that likens the album to a warning sign of sorts, entirely in keeping with its foreboding title and artwork, which recalls the emergency procedure pamphlets you find on airplanes. Cryptic and comforting at the same time." KH - EYE WEEKLY - Oct. 27th 2005