MPA: Church of Mandrax
Edition of 100 on Sentient Recognition Archives. Here's my promo: "The title Church of Mandrax combines the John Cale/Terry Riley album with a brand name for methaquaalone, and that's probably a good place to start, but even better is if you've ever heard Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Illustrated Man, that's what I wanted Church of Mandrax to sound like. I was going for that sullen psychedelic early '70s bummer sound, like taking too much cold medicine and staying up late watching Night Gallery, only a lot more low-rent and congested and using any piece of equipment I could get my grubby hands on. The songs are all pretty short and wrap around staggered nowhere Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer and AX80 riffs blanketed beneath sewer recordings, daisy-chained dictaphones, blown amps and rewired intercom systems. The album is an introduction of the mythical Midwestern witch Vons Serin, the central character of the upcoming Theater of Diminished Faculties series of stories, albums and radio plays. Better performers I shamelessly ripped off include Lionel Marchetti, Steelpole Bathtub, Maggi Payne, Loop, The Ballroom/Millennium/Sagatarius, East Bionic Symphonia and Luciano Berio, among countless others. MPA has released albums on MYMWLY, Black Horizons, DumpsterScore, Sloow Tapes, Small Doses and Ruralfaune, and has opened shows for Demons, John Wiese and Deathroes as well as performing as a guest member of Number None. Play at any volume you like.This album marks the tenth year MPA has played totally fake sunshine noise in basements and abandoned barns around the midwest, and I thank you all for your continued indulgence.".
- Black Locusts and White Honey
- Hum of the Morning Star
- Church of Mandrax
- Trying to Sell Some Broken Amps
- The Grand Order of Psychedelic Housewives
- Obscure Tape Music of Eastern Iowa
- Behind Me There Is Nothing
- The Butterfly Labyrinth of the Black Thighed Witch
- The White of the Bones of your Hands
- Silence to Say Goodbye
Reviews:
"Here's a noisey dude that apparently has been around for a motherfucking decade doing shit like opening for John Wiese and occasionally dabbling in the tragically under-appreciated Number None. Best of all? He's got an East Coast tour in the works. But alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. Wtf is this Church Of Mandrax all about?
"Throw on your shitty pair of boots, cross the murky swamp, hang a right at the split tree, go until you find the two tailed turtle, then listen veeerry closely. You should hear some scary noises. Follow those sounds and you'll reach the rusted shack they call the Church of Mandrax where Medroxy Progesterone Acetate is conjuring fucked up sounds from his mostly dead electronics.
"The noise on this record is fucking incredible. On the surface, it's a lot of buzzing and droning that would probably scare most of your relatives (except for that one cool cousin who really looks up you and listens to every mix tape you give him). However there isn't any seizure inducing power electronics on Mandrax (well, maybe a little, like on "Trying To Sell Some Broken Amps" which actually sounds like it was recorded using some broken amps). For the most part, it sounds like distant band saws, fog horns, church bells, and whatever kind of strange reptiles you'd find in a swamp, with swarms of gnats whirring around your head.
"Some of my favorite noise records are the ones that are so deeply layered that a hundred listens still wouldn't reveal all of the beautiful and delicate intricacies. Church Of Mandrax is one of those records. Sheet upon sheet of dirty & spaced out electronics that are half snowy lullaby, half drugged nightmare.
"How MPA has slipped below my radar for so long I'll never know. But I sure am glad I discovered him before he toured, otherwise I might have missed him in Boston and that would have been a fucking catastrophe. Also of note, Church Of Mandrax is on the newish DIY label Sentient Recognition Archive (aka SRA) who I will also have to keep my eye on seeing as they've put out stuff by Ophibre, Caldera Lakes, and Machinefabriek among others. Machinefabriek, people! That automatically gives them credibility (as if they needed it after putting out Mandrax). -Anti-Gravity Bunny
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"'The Theater of Diminished Faculties is a story in seventyeight episodes, of which this is the first. Church of Mandrax is an introduction...'
"...to slick static, the kind you can never quite grasp between stations: an emergency broadcast system, if its goal was a lullaby to calm the panicked masses. But suddenly it's Moby gone very wrong, heart monitor stretches, a clogged drain growling up schizophrenic voices, all with viscerally juicy underlying beats.
"The title track evokes altars flickering in and out of existence, whole scenes of ikons and ascensions and razor-winged angels, the sense that there are things happenings here you will never understand. A vortex flickers over the organ, bringing you to strange and unexpected places. The music is constantly shifting but for two deep bass notes like sharp waves, swirling upwards like the Empyrean in Dante's Divine Comedy. ('A stairway I beheld to such height / Uplifted that mine eyes pursued it not'!)
"Midway through the album you will realize that this is NOISE, roaring and sliding violently, a moshpit of rock and steel, chewing and gnashing, an assault of distorted proportions.
"The chant of empty highrises is slowed down and sped up, the irradiated roofs at Trinity Site releasing their cold black breath. The Cedar Valley beast with red eyes caught on grainy tape, chuckling at you in the darkness like a sphinx, nuzzling and chewing so gently you haven't yet realized you are running out of gas and the grid is cold.
"A thumping and suspenseful Eastern horror soundtrack with sleepy, scrambled, swampy voices instructing you: There is always a villain and you will not always know him. Creeping hallucinations that only suddenly constrict you, a charming melody of nitrous oxide, the elegant influence of a nightmarish Rod Serling.
"This noise is familiar but you cannot place it. Nothing is how you left it, not even the lights, and you must learn quickly or perish slowly.
"Listen to the radio commercial here to gently set your bones right again. (It begs for a proper teaser trailer!)
Purchase Church of Mandrax here from Sentient Recognition Archive or check out cryptonarrative. I very highly recommend purchasing anything at all from MPA, because the packaging is always artful and scholarly fascinating..." -Serpentcoils
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"... lovely set of gauzy synth & field-recording automations from one d. bauler ; hadn’t heard head nor tails of this project until the recent ruralfaune disc (which has been something of a creeper around here) - this raises the bar w/ an even denser array of sound ..." -mimaroglu music sales
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"Sometimes you read things and you don't know if its true (and internet is never good to place verify information), but apparently 'The Theater of Diminished Faculties is a story in seventy-eight episodes, of which this is the first. Church of Mandrax is an introduction and consideration of the legendary Midwest witch Vons Serin, around whom the entire series is wound, and who is hidden in the corners of every MPA release'. I don't know if there was such a witch and how her influence stretches out to seventy-eight episodes, but then the music is quite a surprise too. There is a credit for one Darren Bauler on junk and Deborah Siegel on voices. But that hardly justifies the content of this release. That may sound like a 'screaming industrial garbage tape', but the junk of Bauler is fed through lots of computer processing and/or other electronic means and make together a highly interesting industrial and ambient (although that feature comes second after the industrial component) sound according to the latest fashion in this scene. Very digital that is, but Church Of Mandrax manages to keep things warm in all its harshness. There is a great flow to the music, always moving and changing, and there is also a nice sense of humor: tracks are called 'Obscure Tape Music Of Eastern Iowa', 'Trying To Sell Some Broken Amps' and 'The Loyal Order Of Pschedelic Housewives'. All of this combined made me think this was a giant laugh. It plays around with all sorts of notions - gothic at the very forefront - but its cleverly never what it seems to be." -Vital Weekly #671