reviews:

"don't be fooled by the words "we're" and "band" nor the label that released this; it's still iowa's darren bauler, and he's still making noise. i remember when the letters mymwly were synonymous with rad psych music (most of which hinged on folk), but i haven't seen that much from them recently. either they've slowed their roll or i haven't been paying as much attention since the past few years. regardless, i was intrigued when i saw that those folks were putting out an mpa disc. also, to be accurate (which happens less often than i'd like), there are a couple of helper-outers spread about on this disc: ana skyfish, david moses fruchter, jenna cohen and a few others.going back to the connection between the artist and the label, in this particular instance, the psych is short for psychotic. so, if that's the idiom, mymwly has another winner on their hands.

"the sinister cobwebs of bauler's psyche won't get brushed out until later in this disc as the first few tracks are actually pretty nice. the yoke opens up with a lo-fi vocal recording; through distortion from the cheap microphone it's hard to make out what he's saying, but i know it involves said yoke. the last thing that he'll say is "... all the days of my life", then exhale a breathy sigh which transforms into a brief burst of recording noise once the yoke's music kicks up. speaking of which, what will stand out the most will be a dominant one tone drone (nearly omnipresent), but it's everything else that's he doing that you should really be paying attention to. throughout the track's thirteen minutes, darren makes great use of swirling atmospheric sounds (if your atmosphere happened to be entertaining a blizzard at the time) and panned noises with secondary drones, distinct in each speaker. there's actually a warmness to this piece of music, which is ordinarily not the case when it comes to mpa. okay, it's also the case in the following track, paleyellowpurple. now you're just making me looking bad. the barren howls of the looped backdrop manage to evoke a meditative trance in conjunction with the tiny splinters of digital noise dropping down and ms. cohen's pre-recorded soliloquy (phone conversation? poetry?). again, i can't tell what's being said, but it provides a nice humanistic touch, whereas the digitized sounds occurring around her could've swung the track into a colder direction if let alone.

"circle of salt takes its cues from paleyellowpurple, but this time we have a man's voice. also, without the ambiance this does take on a colder, more isolated feel. not much going on in the noise department with the track, but there is a fantastic job done with layering. while the slow pace and relative minimalism make it subtler than other pieces of music on we're a monotonous band, this might be my favorite track. quite a few of the layers have a bit of dynamics to them, so while i might initially lock in on an undulating background tone, my attention would shift to the forefront and darren's staticy, sputtery tone work, then i'd shift again to a different drone, before a new wrinkle in the sound would reveal itself.

"more vocals mark the onset of the deviating teenage basement spaceship, this time though it's a sample, and it's only briefly used. i enjoyed how it got overplayed on top of itself, but the second one will get slowed down to a snail's pace creating a nifty effect that will enhance the tripped out martian vibe that darren's creating. this is the soundtrack for plan b from outer space... on acid.

"mpa's mood will start getting a little more fucked up just in time for slaughterhouse champs. taking a refrain from the overdubbed density of circle of salt, he'll use much lighter layers of brooding sounds to compliment and play off of each other to create a bit of tension. once near the midway portion of champs' five minutes, auxiliary sounds are held back, as the focus shifts to a fuller sound. a solid drone will take its place in the mix, there's an all too brief squawk of analog noise and the two main layers of sound are distorted, and occasionally manipulated buzzes which will intertwine, move out of range, and reestablish themselves. good shit.

"the buffalo bill baiting how does the skin man get his skin certainly doesn't do shit to lighten the mood. ominous atmospherics, tortured wails that are pushed low in the mix and a deep booming bass sound are all he's giving us. by taking away the noise, we're just left with a creepy foundation, and it does its job very well.

"evil plays a big role in the tale set to experimental noise, the story of the solehn sisters, who were in love with each other. the music here seems secondary, so let's get that out of the way first: repetitious and encircling ambiance (it might be phased, adding to the feel), a high pitched buzz of a drone (that's low enough not to become grating). as far as the story goes, it's like grimm's fairy tales, if they were more like grim fairy tales.

"lastly, is the wonderfully titled the necropsych snowblind blues band performs overdriven liturgical dirges for lotte reiniger. for having the word necro in the title, it's actually not morbid at all. for having overdriven in the title, it actually uses that effect a lot. as has been his modus operandi (i credit mobb deep for this being in my lexicon) during this disc, bauler will implement a sonically pleasing background layer and a few innocuous drones to fill out the space not taken up by his distorted base. i love the trade-off between the overdriven noise and shrill squeals near the four minute mark.apparently, the best way to get this disc would be to go through darren himself, as he's packaging it with a bonus cd-r: vons serin exchanging frequencies with cicadas (dedicated to ruth white). the first, and titular track, is almost forty minutes of great experimental noise. decidedly less dark than a majority of we're a monotonous band, it does have a dreary thread running through it, which would surely appeal to white. the other piece, unrequited, is not as necessary being that it's just twenty-seven minutes of warm, gentle, undulating tones. it sounds nice and all, but certainly pales in interest compared to exchanging frequencies." -Smooth Assailing

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"The sound of crackling black electricity from darkest Iowa. Sometimes a dense churring like millions of robotic grasshoppers, sometimes the high whir of interplanetary radio waves. Digging the felt inner sleeve." -Boa Melody Bar

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"Australia’s MusicYourMindWillLoveYou label has been diversifying their roster a bit as of late, adding noisier brethren The Holy See and Darren Bauler’s Iowa-based Medroxy Progesterone Acetate to the fold. Haven’t heard that particular Holy See release yet but I did get a hold of the latest Medroxy album which I was pretty excited about.

"Back in the summer, I reviewed Something in the Weeds, a killer CD-r of droney noise or noisy drone depending on yr predilection. Anyhow, at the time I said it was the best I’d heard from the MPA project but, I don’t know, that throne may have a new successor with We’re a Monotonous Band. In somewhat typical MPA style, the record kicks off with its longest track, “The Yoke”. After a short spoken intro (“They threw the yoke upon me, all of the days my life”, I think), electronics start a-buzzing. One of Bauler’s strongest traits is his ear for electronic textures. It seems like almost every track of his features every waveform imaginable. There’s stuttering, creaking, pulsing, shining, scraping, rumbling, rustling, spitting, crumbling and any other adjectives you can think of. His other strength lies in that he can stack all those sounds on top of each other and make cohesive batholiths of heaving frequencies. “The Yoke” is relentless. It just keeps coming at you with more and more sounds. Though, it sounds like there are a couple key loops coursing through the whole thing, particularly the glistening, wavering sine wave that’s exposed at the end. “Paleyellowpurple” matches airy drones with a synthetic tone being slightly pitch-shifted and modulated. A woman’s voice begins speaking though it’s pretty unintelligible, due mostly to the answering machine quality of the recording. She sounds very distressed and that comes through despite her unknown words. Interesting pairing of anguished humanity and placid synthetic-ness. “Circle of Salt” within the opening moments already sounds classic. Again there is a vocal recording, this time male, and buried underneath a ton of electronic debris. The thing that makes the track so killer is the ghostly sense of melody Bauler imbues the piece with. Sure there’s nothing “melodic” about jutting shards of noise or the crackling/rumbling dropping in and out, but the piece sounds meticulously structured and arranged, so even during the attack of the machines there’s a vague underlying warmth. At the end, as the piece breaks down the man’s voice becomes slightly clearer and says something about “hearing things”, which is what I feel like whenever I hear this track. I mean, of course I’m hearing things but you know, I not sure if I’m hearing what I’m actually hearing. Anyway, not describing that well at all so I’m moving on to the Smog referencing(?) “Teenage Basement Spaceship”. After a brief a pitch manipulation of another voice sample, the track gets going with a continual astral ascent. “Spaceship” has more open space than the previous track. Particularly at the end. There’s actually a great bit for the last 15 seconds where a heavy, bassy sound periodically thuds over a smooth sine wave, really wish it carried on a bit longer. “Slaughterhouse Champs” is more active with noisy synth manipulation against a beautiful mellow/melancholy backdrop. Reaching a great, subtle build until someone pulls the power. “How Does the Skin Man Get His Skin?” it’s a brief, unsettling piece with a bunch of electronic sounds resembling bird noises, a gong, a violin and voice.

"The Story of the Solehn Sisters, Who Were in Love with Each Other” features a bit prettier arrangement with echoing pulsating synthstreams. There is also a man (Bauler?) telling the eponymous story, saying things to the effect of “since no one would write stories about women who aren’t beautiful, she was beautiful” and the sisters, at one point, kill “all the trust fund princes”. Interesting story to say the least. The thing is a lot of time the voice/story over music seems gimmicky to me but Bauler pulls it off somehow, maybe it’s the incredibly bizarre tone of the delivery. The finale, the even more unwieldy titled “The Necropsych Snowblind Blues Band Presents Overdriven Liturgical Dirges For Lotte Reiniger” is somewhat similar to the amazing closer, “The Pig Who Stood Upright”, on Something in the Weeds; though it’s a less straightforwardly melodic piece. There are two main layers of sound going at it, a pretty synth wash and an uncouth bit of stammering noise augmented by squirming filter sounds and effect vocal clips. The piece actually lasts for 9 and a half minutes, though you’d never be able to tell. It’s easy to get lost in the façade; that is until it’s broken up rather abruptly and the album is over.

"The CD-r comes packaged with black and white art on fold over cardstock with velvety redness lining the inside. Real sweet. It comes with an insert too. Copies are still available from the label but if you can, it’s always better get a copy from Darren himself. He elaborately packages his releases to the nines and his bundle for We’re A Monotonous Band is no different. First and foremost, the album comes with a bonus CD-r entitled Vons Serin Exchanging Frequencies With Cicadas. It features an excellent 39 minute opus of the same name as well as “Unrequited” a placid, 27 minute live set from last year. It comes with a classy looking double-sided, fold-out cover and a bunch of scraps of text crammed inside; it also reads at the bottom “MPA ’08: we’re coming to your town, we’re gonna burn it down”. That better be a promise, nay, a guarantee. The whole thing comes tied with a ribbon and sealed with wax, with a lensless Polaroid and an old ‘Lesson Picture Card’ slipped between the two discs. So whichever way you can, definitely pick this one up." -Auxiliary Out

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"We're a Monotonous Band" on (yay!) good ol' MYMWLY is a collection of 8 shorter pieces (the longest is 13mins; the shortest 2-and-a-half): more malfunctioning machines and buzzing foundnoise halfscapes with great titles! "Teenage Basement Spaceship" sounds exactly like you imagine it might, shifting from a brief monged-out/tape-stretched drugchat intro to shimmering metal-flake-sprayed oscillations that come off as the missing-link between, ohhh I dunno, HT's "The Sea-Org" and the "Forbidden Planet" OST...featuring incomprensible blocks of dayglo alien machinery that slide up and down the sound-scale thru shifting tunnels of solid light.

"Paleyellowpurple" and "The Story of the Solehn Sisters, Who Were in Love With Each Other" both contain length spoken-word interjections, surreal ssssshort stories and otherworldly monologues that help take the music off to somewhere else (and vice versa). The insertion of prepared text and found-vocals is a trend that I sincerely hope MPA continue with. Actually, I found the album got even more interesting as it went along: as we appraoch the final furlong on the CD "How Does the Skin Man get his Skin?" starts sounding like some wounded humanoid stalking the sewers: eerie, yet also solemnly touching in some way, with little damaged animal noises leaking in from the side-tunnels, while a sluggish mechanoid haltingly lurches through the sewage. It could almost be the soundtrack to some impossibly weird short-film...more overtly organic, I reckon, than some of the earlier pieces...

"But my own personal favourite might be "The Necropsych Snowblind Blues Band Performs Overdriven Liturgical Dirges for Lotte Reiniger"...here, snippets of subterranean Dero-talk pan back n forth between ominous-sounding synthetic cellos which suddenly erupt out into distorted Telecaster skree...it's like some nightmarish phonecall from another world, with particles of sound dancing in the air like jittery rice-grains hopping on the membrane of a drum or fireflies chasing their own tails in a remote midsummers-night clearing...here, the layers of distortion seem to bubble and rub up against each other, the sound circling off to one side dn a plug-hole or into an old-fashioned telephone mouthpiece. High-pitched whistles start and then stop again...then there's a trumpet (or something) buried deep beneath the accreted digital scribble - it wobbles uncertainly as if it's rotating in space; untouched by human lips, but being blown by an uncertain breeze of quantal aether...It all sounds quite lovely to my damaged ears, but in an unlovely way...there's vague touches of Christian Fennesz towards the end of this one, or rather his trip-damaged nephew fleeing to Vienna Airport in a taxi that hurtles thru blurred, off-colour Lynchian streets, y'dig?

"Phew." -Kid Shirt

mpa | cryptonarrative | journal of speculative disease