Cibo Matto's music is immediately accessible and provocatively entertaining, but they've got a
creative appetite for experimentatlon and they're not afraid of throwing atonal curveballs or
crafting wicked parodies of pop culture. THE NAME Cibo Matto {Chee-bo Mott-o}. Italian for
'Crazy food' or something like that The name comes from a '70s Italian grade-B erotic comedy,
Seso Matto (Sex Madness). THE RECIPE Viva! La Woman! mixes a surreal melange from a
supermarket of samples (bossa nova, '40s swing and steel drums are a few favorites) which are
looped, juxtaposed in odd combinations and even scratched hip-hop style. These delicious layes
are topped with sugary-sweet bilingual pop melodies, melt-in-your-mouth, torch-singing, nutty
broken-English rapping, absurd stories and occasional screams that will curdle milk. The songs all
centered around the themes of "food and love," are a delightful mix of strangely ridiculous and
provocatively sensual; some of the wittiest puns are at the same time quite sad and poetic ("My
heart Is like an artichoke... I eat the petals... myself...one by one"). THE MENU Dreamy pop
songs ("Sugar Water"), wild riot grrl raps ("Birthday Cake"), bittersweet ballads ("Artichoke" and
the sweet and spicy "White Pepper lce Cream"), European cinematic sophistication ("Theme"),
mutated jazz ("Le Pain Perdu"), oddball cover transformations (Sammy Davis Jr.'s "The Candy
Man"), bestiality punk ("Beef Jerky")Ñare you paying attention? "Know Your Chicken" and
"Theme" are over-stuffed with musical ingredients (funky beats, dote grooves off-kilter loops,
strange riffs, found sounds) but baked into delectable songs which are as catchy as they are
bizarre. THE HISTORY Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda are two crazy chicks from New York's
Lower East Side who've quickly become the hottest dish in town. Walk around their neighborhood
and you'll hear punk rock colliding with salsa tripping over hip-hop on top of African drums and
avant garde jazz saxophone. Cibo Matto could only be cooked up in a 'hood where you can eat
lathes, sushi, pozole, kimchi, curry and Jerk chicken all on the same block. In 1994, through their
mutual friend Shayla, the two found themselves in a punk band together: the sugar-fueled,
Boredoms-inspired Leitoh Lychee (translation: frozen Iychee not). The group was awesome--Yuka
learned a few guitar chords, Miho perfected her scream-but it was after the rehearsals, when the
two went out to eat, that the real magic happened. A mutual love of (make that obsession with)
food and mode soon led to Cibo Matto... Before ion', they were playin' tiny clubs, tinier art galleries
and underground radio stations. People heard them and Brent CRAZY... They went to Europe
and played at festivals. They ate like pigs and gained ten pounds. Europeans heard them and
went CRAZY... THE WOMEN: MIHO HATORI Aries. She's the anger. Lives In New York Clty.
Grew up In Tokyo suburbs. Born on the planet Venus,claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Son
Ra. She worked in a funky record store, sang in a Japanese hip-hop band (Kimidori),
unsuccessfully took opera lessons and devoured Japanese cartoons. She became a club DJ and
developed her free-form sensibility, segue-ing Curtis Mayfield, AREA, the Slits, Jimi Hendrix,
Butter, Beastie Boys, Serge Gainsborg, and especially the Boredoms ("They make me sick") Look
up the word 'cool' in a Japanese/English dictionary and you'll see a picture of Miho. "It's a
spaceship and I am stewardess of this spaceship." THE WOMEN: YUKA HONDA Sagittarius.
She plays the keyboards and the sampler. She's lived In New York for eight years and, like most
NYC musicians, she's played in a lot of bands; but from the diversity of these groups, she brings
expertise in eclectic styles to Cibo Matto. Her wild background includes: twisted rock (with Arto
Lindsay), avant jazz (with Dave Douglas), insane punk (Leitoh Lychee), hip-hop (with Sha-Key),
soul (Nope Is A Muscle), acid jazz (Brooklyn Funk Essentials), improvisation (John Zorn's Cobra)
and Brazilian pop (with Caetano Veloso). She'll have a solo album out next year on John Zorn's
Tzadik label. Ellington Miles, Marvin, Gaye., Caetano, Nino Rota, Stooges, Public Enemy, Gael
Greene, Martha Stewart, mango sorbet... "I didn't have a life when I was a kid. Soul Train was the
big event of my week. " THE SAMPLER Probably the most misunderstood of instruments, the
sampler is revolutionizing music, widening the composer's palette from notes and instruments to
very specific sound samples that couldn't otherwise be recreated. Just as the editing capabilities
of the word processor changed the process of writing, not lost the speed, the sampler brings new
ways of blending, fusing, looping and shaping musical sounds. Instead of refining songs through
jams and rehearsals, Yuka labors over a song for days or weeks In her living room, then performs
the samples live without a sequencer. Cibo Matto can easily jump In a cab, sampler In tow, and be
on stage anywhere In fifteen minutes! THE PRODUCERS Viva! la Woman! was lovingly
produced and engineered by Mitchell Froom, Tchad Blake (Los Lobos, Latin Playboys, Tom
Waits, Suzanne Vega [Tchad produced Soul Coughing too). Mitchell caught one of the very early
Cibo Matto performances and immediately began begging to produce the group Matto, not
knowing who he was, assumed he was trying to pull a scam and blew him off. He kept coming
back to see them... THE GUEST STARS Dougie Boone (Lounge Lizards), Dave Douglas
(Masada), Bernie Worrell (Parilament/Funkadelic), Rick Lee (Skeleton Key), Marc Anthony
Thompson (Hope Is A Muscle), Josh Roseman and lay Rodriguez (Groove Collective)..a pretty hot
line-up! THE BAND MOTTO "No reason." THE FUTURE Be on the lookout for an upcoming 12"
version of "Super Water" remixed by Mike D. (Beastie Boys), Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys
producer) and Russell Simmons (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), an extra-crispy fuzz-bass version
of "Know Your Chicken" with Russell on drums (on the second Cibo Matto 7" on 1;1 Diablo
Records), and a Cibo Matto remix of a song off the new Yoko Ono album! Watch for the the Cibo
Matto Saturday morn ing cartoon series, Cibo Matto dolls, Cibo Matto gourmet TV dinners, Ben 8
ferry's Cibo Matto sorbet (lime, jalapeno bitter chocolate, coconut milk, biscotti crunch)... "Bon
Appetit/ Shut up and eat!"
Cibo Matto's music is immediately accessible and provocatively entertaining, but they've got a
creative appetite for experimentatlon and they're not afraid of throwing atonal curveballs or
crafting wicked parodies of pop culture. THE NAME Cibo Matto {Chee-bo Mott-o}. Italian for
'Crazy food' or something like that The name comes from a '70s Italian grade-B erotic comedy,
Seso Matto (Sex Madness). THE RECIPE Viva! La Woman! mixes a surreal melange from a
supermarket of samples (bossa nova, '40s swing and steel drums are a few favorites) which are
looped, juxtaposed in odd combinations and even scratched hip-hop style. These delicious layes
are topped with sugary-sweet bilingual pop melodies, melt-in-your-mouth, torch-singing, nutty
broken-English rapping, absurd stories and occasional screams that will curdle milk. The songs all
centered around the themes of "food and love," are a delightful mix of strangely ridiculous and
provocatively sensual; some of the wittiest puns are at the same time quite sad and poetic ("My
heart Is like an artichoke... I eat the petals... myself...one by one"). THE MENU Dreamy pop
songs ("Sugar Water"), wild riot grrl raps ("Birthday Cake"), bittersweet ballads ("Artichoke" and
the sweet and spicy "White Pepper lce Cream"), European cinematic sophistication ("Theme"),
mutated jazz ("Le Pain Perdu"), oddball cover transformations (Sammy Davis Jr.'s "The Candy
Man"), bestiality punk ("Beef Jerky")Ñare you paying attention? "Know Your Chicken" and
"Theme" are over-stuffed with musical ingredients (funky beats, dote grooves off-kilter loops,
strange riffs, found sounds) but baked into delectable songs which are as catchy as they are
bizarre. THE HISTORY Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda are two crazy chicks from New York's
Lower East Side who've quickly become the hottest dish in town. Walk around their neighborhood
and you'll hear punk rock colliding with salsa tripping over hip-hop on top of African drums and
avant garde jazz saxophone. Cibo Matto could only be cooked up in a 'hood where you can eat
lathes, sushi, pozole, kimchi, curry and Jerk chicken all on the same block. In 1994, through their
mutual friend Shayla, the two found themselves in a punk band together: the sugar-fueled,
Boredoms-inspired Leitoh Lychee (translation: frozen Iychee not). The group was awesome--Yuka
learned a few guitar chords, Miho perfected her scream-but it was after the rehearsals, when the
two went out to eat, that the real magic happened. A mutual love of (make that obsession with)
food and mode soon led to Cibo Matto... Before ion', they were playin' tiny clubs, tinier art galleries
and underground radio stations. People heard them and Brent CRAZY... They went to Europe
and played at festivals. They ate like pigs and gained ten pounds. Europeans heard them and
went CRAZY... THE WOMEN: MIHO HATORI Aries. She's the anger. Lives In New York Clty.
Grew up In Tokyo suburbs. Born on the planet Venus,claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Son
Ra. She worked in a funky record store, sang in a Japanese hip-hop band (Kimidori),
unsuccessfully took opera lessons and devoured Japanese cartoons. She became a club DJ and
developed her free-form sensibility, segue-ing Curtis Mayfield, AREA, the Slits, Jimi Hendrix,
Butter, Beastie Boys, Serge Gainsborg, and especially the Boredoms ("They make me sick") Look
up the word 'cool' in a Japanese/English dictionary and you'll see a picture of Miho. "It's a
spaceship and I am stewardess of this spaceship." THE WOMEN: YUKA HONDA Sagittarius.
She plays the keyboards and the sampler. She's lived In New York for eight years and, like most
NYC musicians, she's played in a lot of bands; but from the diversity of these groups, she brings
expertise in eclectic styles to Cibo Matto. Her wild background includes: twisted rock (with Arto
Lindsay), avant jazz (with Dave Douglas), insane punk (Leitoh Lychee), hip-hop (with Sha-Key),
soul (Nope Is A Muscle), acid jazz (Brooklyn Funk Essentials), improvisation (John Zorn's Cobra)
and Brazilian pop (with Caetano Veloso). She'll have a solo album out next year on John Zorn's
Tzadik label. Ellington Miles, Marvin, Gaye., Caetano, Nino Rota, Stooges, Public Enemy, Gael
Greene, Martha Stewart, mango sorbet... "I didn't have a life when I was a kid. Soul Train was the
big event of my week. " THE SAMPLER Probably the most misunderstood of instruments, the
sampler is revolutionizing music, widening the composer's palette from notes and instruments to
very specific sound samples that couldn't otherwise be recreated. Just as the editing capabilities
of the word processor changed the process of writing, not lost the speed, the sampler brings new
ways of blending, fusing, looping and shaping musical sounds. Instead of refining songs through
jams and rehearsals, Yuka labors over a song for days or weeks In her living room, then performs
the samples live without a sequencer. Cibo Matto can easily jump In a cab, sampler In tow, and be
on stage anywhere In fifteen minutes! THE PRODUCERS Viva! la Woman! was lovingly
produced and engineered by Mitchell Froom, Tchad Blake (Los Lobos, Latin Playboys, Tom
Waits, Suzanne Vega [Tchad produced Soul Coughing too). Mitchell caught one of the very early
Cibo Matto performances and immediately began begging to produce the group Matto, not
knowing who he was, assumed he was trying to pull a scam and blew him off. He kept coming
back to see them... THE GUEST STARS Dougie Boone (Lounge Lizards), Dave Douglas
(Masada), Bernie Worrell (Parilament/Funkadelic), Rick Lee (Skeleton Key), Marc Anthony
Thompson (Hope Is A Muscle), Josh Roseman and lay Rodriguez (Groove Collective)..a pretty hot
line-up! THE BAND MOTTO "No reason." THE FUTURE Be on the lookout for an upcoming 12"
version of "Super Water" remixed by Mike D. (Beastie Boys), Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys
producer) and Russell Simmons (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), an extra-crispy fuzz-bass version
of "Know Your Chicken" with Russell on drums (on the second Cibo Matto 7" on 1;1 Diablo
Records), and a Cibo Matto remix of a song off the new Yoko Ono album! Watch for the the Cibo
Matto Saturday morn ing cartoon series, Cibo Matto dolls, Cibo Matto gourmet TV dinners, Ben 8
ferry's Cibo Matto sorbet (lime, jalapeno bitter chocolate, coconut milk, biscotti crunch)... "Bon
Appetit/ Shut up and eat!" 
