MPA: Supplications
Original version released 2004 in an edition of five or six (or something) consisting of a mistreated music box containing c90 cassette, microcassette (containing tracks Xemetrina and Shabu-Gomi), texts, baby teeth, photographs, fetish-items.
2007 reissue on Black Horizons contains new and remixed tracks:
- The Mars Hill Halfway House Talent Show (31.4m)
- Corrupted Mirror-Trap
- They Will Never Find My Body
- Vons Serin, Hidden In Soil
- The Hudson Working (They See You With Three Eyes)
- Little Pieces
- Melusine Shoreline
Recorded at the Church of the Final Wisdom, Iowa 2001-2003, and Ward B, California 1997(?). Assembled and mixed at Kara-Bakos, Iowa 2003-2004. Little Pieces recorded live at the Hudson Machinery Network. Vocals by her most High Holy Highness K. Edeker, secret goddess of the nine inch knife.
reviews:
"for a guy who appears to be all over the internet, iowa's darren bauler manages to maintain a pretty low key profile. while i can find out what his musical interests are or his favorite books via friendster (friendster?! lolz), i can't seem to find out anything about his actual musical endeavors or why he named his project after provera. nothing shouts: "get ready for some fun!" quite like chemical compounds.
"by design, i think that noise is supposed to give you a headache, and that you shouldn't first get a headache and then go listen to noise. regardless, i've had an annoying headache all weekend, bad for reviewing loud music, but i have work to do... so much work. while i'm on my way to becoming the first moron to overdose on excedrin, i won't let that serve as an impasse.
"alright, the a-side opener the mars hill halfway house talent show sounds like it could actually be fun, but no, all the fun is being isolated to its title. while it's twenty-two minutes long, it's an outstanding first impression. this is along the lines of a haunting epic. it's paced really slowly, but darren opts not for eerie minimalism, but instead piles on complimentary layers (which he'll continue to do throughout supplications), some of which are panned to certain channels. it's all crafted rather remarkably. the inclusion of an oscillating ambiance which is punctuated sporadically by feedback will net bauler a gold star next to his name. there are some dynamics to it as it rolls along, more prevalent during the last half. corrupted mirror-trap is more minimal sounding. there's some nice static that gets briefly interrupted by a really nice musical piece, but then it's back to the static until the final minute. it's good. the groaned from beyond the grave vocals on they will never find my body are superb, thankfully, so to is the music itself.
"going back to friendster, under darren's favorite tv shows 'test bars' was listed, and never is that more evident than on the second side's the hudson working (they see you with three eyes). it starts off with high pitched frequencies that could've been done by the emergency broadcast system itself. darren, you're killing my head right now. hudson is in a similar vein as the mars hill, nice use of layers, down-tempo mood but it lacks the creepier feeling that the other track gave me. the finale, melusine shoreline features the only attempt at rhythm, and it's a successful one. while it's processed to hell, maybe beneficially so, it's a solid component that gives it some staying power. great use of different channel layers as well as background ambiance.
"black horizons has a real winner with this cassette (originally released back in 2004 in an edition of five). it's not outright noisy, the feedback and high pitches might make you reach for the volume knob, but that's about it. i loved mpa's layering, tonality and use of mood. supplications could be sinister at times, but really, it was seldom. you don't have to be into death industrial / dark ambient to appreciate medroxy progesterone acetate.
"another visually pleasing tape from the label, too." -Smooth Assailing
"Though Darren Bauler claims no deep meaning lies behind the name, Medroxy Progesterone Acetate is an unwieldy enough moniker that one can’t get past it without some explanation. Here’s mine: so MPA is the chemist’s term for the drug Provera (no copyright disrespect, big pharm), a chemical synthetic of a female hormone that blocks the flow of estrogen. Let loose in the bloodstream, this foreign substance is received as if it were its organic counterpart, and the body responds accordingly. In loose parallel, Bauler’s MPA is also a laboratory recreation of the natural, in this case a meticulously produced depiction of a strange primeval perceptual state, a sensory flood unstructured by the categories by which we make sense of experience.
"The lab comparison is not entirely metaphorical. Bauler begins an MPA piece with a host of environmental recordings—of drains, power stations, and empty fields rather than the usual birdsongs and river sounds. These tapes are then processed/warped with solvents, magnets, and “modified recording equipment.” The altered medium is then integrated with home-made electronics and waspy synths to create an impenetrable mass of whirling sound. Fragments of the original recordings enter and recede, as do mystery voices, hidden music-box melodies, and uvular murmurs possibly human in origin. Despite this imposing density, the sound is constantly fluctuating, and few figures return after their introduction.
"As with Matthew Bower and Marcia Bassett’s Hototogisu project, there exists a Zen-like quality to the cacophony of MPA. While the noise is ever-present and often harsh, the music exists in an eternal moment. Through sheer depth and sonic overload, both artists seek to demolish time, to reconnect our everyday lives to the pulsing oneness underlying the artificial distinctions created by our minds. While some receive this idea aurally as Om, Bauler and company hear in the universe a more chaotic compression of being and becoming, perhaps less directly religious but still spiritual in its late-night, red-eyed fanaticism.
"But to approach such unity as a human is to edge to madness. And to listen to MPA is to dive directly into that madness. Bauler's become a Dr. Frankenstein of sorts, and his tapes an audio projection of the mind of the monster overwhelmed by the flickering tumult of torches and townspeople. When a mind cannot cope, and necessary boundaries break, the senses don’t bleed; they hemorrhage." -Bryan Berge, Tape Hiss #23
"Another beautifully packaged tape of unknown sounds from the great Black Horizons label, this one from a unit called Medroxy Progesterone Acetate, who originally released "Supplications" themselves in a collectors' edition of five (!). This reissue could boast the toppest notchest packaging from BH to date - "color cover on black shimmer cardstock, with an insert containing texts / collage, on silver paper, clear labels. Hi-bias chrome tapes in an edition of 56" (hey, it's 51 more than the last run this tape had). Medroxy Progesterone Acetate is the nom de plume of Waterloo, Iowa's Darren Bauler, who used to play in a "tape-junk combo" called BFP, whatever that may stand for. When that dissolved in 1999, MPA began, and has since released a few documents on his own and other labels, including a collaboration with the Number None as Damp and Damned on Sloow Tapes. He's got a record coming soon on Musicyourmindwillloveyou called "We're a Monotonous Band" and another called "Play Something Slow" on Paha Porvari, so there's much to look forward to. Don't know how they'll match up to the standards set by his previous releases - early editions claimed to come with baby teeth and "fetish items" while some long-gone CD-Rs were 100 tracks in length. Gad-fucking-zooks.
"Bauler puts a staggering amount of equipment and instruments to work in his recordings, some standard and most not-so-standard, including various mystifying things with names like the Sleep Generator and the Abbadon Device...sounds more like machinery for torture. And I guess in a way you could say it is! Nyuk nyuk. But seriously. I'm guessing a vast amount of Bauler's noise-makers were drawn upon to complete "Supplications", because the sonics are diverse enough that there's scarcely any repetition at all throughout the whole c78, and when there are, you know it's for effect and not for lack of originality. On the first side, Bauler splits between two kinds of blackened ambient sprawl - on "The Mars Hill Halfway House Talent Show" and "They Will Never Find My Body", there's far more ominous notes to be found. Scrambly electronic vibrations like circuits blowing and a dubby, bass-heavy background give way to buried vocal extracts and dizzying static creating a worrisome, paranoic atmosphere on the former while the latter threatens with mechanical tooth grinding, brightly burning feedback spears and phantom moans emitted from the mouth of the beast/Zardoz floating head style, minus the camp and the red tights and the Sean Connery. Whenever someone uses the term "that sinking feeling", it's this right here they're referring to. The other two tracks on this side are still creeped, but more in the hovering stasis/cosmic noise kind of way, almost an aural representation of the shimmery black cover the tape comes wrapped up in. In fact, "Vons Serin, Hidden in Soil", hits its stride in between floaty strobing and gorgeous washes of lighthouse/seaside ambience, that sounds like what you might hear form the control deck of an alien spacecraft while your organs are being given a once-over on the examining table in a chance meeting. Don't you hear from a lot of UFO-abductees that they felt a sense of calm and fearlessness when they had E.T.'s playing doctor with the vitals? Right, well that's this track, to a tee.
"El flippo is dedicated to three longer tunes, and unfortunately the first few minutes of the opening "The Hudson Working (They See You With Three Eyes)" come out rather warped by way of a somewhat-mangled tape, but I must say it adds a great air of zippy distortion to the already-skewed synth droning...although it causes my tape player to shut off intermittently which I must say is no fun for anyone. So I missed a chunk of the build up, but the power that sinks in once everything rolls smoothly again still ain't impacted any less - this is a space-sucked black hole drone that'll compress those innards we talked about a paragraph ago if you get too close. It settles into a near-aquatic longform assault, combining said spacehum and the kind of electronic spatter and gargle that doesn't sound planets removed from my own tape difficulties I experienced near the beginning. "Little Pieces" works up a dust-eating drone akin to a streetcleaner passing beside you on the street, or in your bed, and an almost-rhythmic squelch like a deformed, spacey, pseudo beat. Whatever gizmo Bauler uses to generate that vaccuuming drone, it's amazing how much music the ear can pick out of it, because on the surface it sounds like a pretty static layer of dense electro-soak, until you start listening a little deeper. The closing "Melusine Shoreline" is an assortment of various plundered sounds seemingly laid out at random against a milky-white backdrop of gush, but slowly they congeal into patterns of off-kilter effects and snippets, replete with fucked-with conversation clips as if you weren't already nervous enough. It's real nice, if a little over-long.
"On the whole I'm not quite sure what to make of this Medroxy Progesterone Acetate thing, but I can take one thing to my grave and that's knowing he put out at least one great tape that I heard in my life, and I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for the follow-ups because I can smell great things coming from behind the closed door to this cat's downstairs basement. What's great about "Supplications" is the balance in strikes between composition and improvisation, as well as noise and tranquility - too many noise acts these days try to bludgeon you into being intimidated and don't bother to (or don't know how to) put in the effort to craft something truly unique that'll stay inside your head long after it comes out of your stereo. Darren Bauler's got all that down pat already, so there's no place to go from here but up. Or down, depending on how you look at it. If you have yet to cop one of Black Horizons' beautiful editions, no finer place to start than with "Supplications", and not only because it's the only one that has yet to sell out (I think). Early tops of '07 for sure, if I'm allowed to include reissues as such." -Outer Space Gamelan
"Popping a 78 minute epic such as this into a stereo takes a dedicated listener. Make no mistake: this is an Album (note the capitalization). Like many good collections which range over the hour mark, "Supplications" tends to drag on if the listener is not ready to commit the time. Fortunately, the immense work put into this project shows, and even if some of the material could benefit from minor edits a dedicated pair of ears will recognize worth in this painstakingly constructed fabric of weird machinery. "Supplications" is made up of a seven-part stream of high-pitched synthesizer tones, bubbling incantations of bent electronics and buried vocals, all of which are subject to shifting in and out of focus or mutating from sublime static tar into sinister chemical-addled oblivion. In a strange way this could be a darker, more abrasive and arrhythmic version of what Schematic was releasing in the late 90s and early 00s, specifically Richard Devine's work maybe? Could be way off, but considering this material was originally recorded between 2001 and 2003 (originally released in 2004 as an edition of 5 copies-?!?) that's the closest reference point I could think of. Every composition offers something different, and there are more elements present than one could detect in a single listen. The magnitude of the project and the tonal and textural differences between tracks make it near impossible to sum up this entire thing without breaking down the whole of "Supplications" track by track, which I will leave to future generations. What really seals the deal is the incredible packaging job, as has already become the norm with Black Horizons over the course of just 7 albums. Wrapped in heavy, dark shimmering paper and including an insert with black print on silver paper and text screened onto the cassette, this release could not ask for more proper attire." -Cassette Gods