MPA: The Worm in the Womb of the World
- something terrible is about to happen (5.3m)
- coleoptera liturgy (14.5m)
- despite what you may have read on the internet iowa is not the new michigan
- the worm in the womb of the world
- the great hum goddess in the sky is trying to tell you something (13.4m)
- i figured power electronics would be a good way to meet girls
- occlusionism as compared and contrasted with necropsych
- you are my sunshine
(cassette copy may or may not contain bonus track)
everything was used on this album.
recorded between 1981 and 2005 at kara-bakos, the hudson machinery network, oakland cemetery, pigstink manor, ice station bauler, riverhouse co-op, the clover patch, the west high steam tunnels, mars hill church and cemetery, the I80 victor ia rest stop (west and east), city of dogs, treeporch, a church i have been asked not to name, north playground and various locations in iowa, minnesota and texas. assembled and mixed at kara-bakos, waterloo ia 2005-2006.
thanks to chris and jeremy at rebis, city of dogs, sloowtapes, bfp (and rj for keeping the tape), peter b., all my faraway friends.
please donate to the heresee recovery effort: http://www.heresee.com/
"mechanical music is for me something unholy and creepy..." -eta hoffmann, "the automaton"
reviews:
"Ouch. Psychedelic noise at its most damaged. Could be heard a hundred times and not heard. I lucked out. You have to sink into this. Let consciousness go offline. WWW has layers that don’t click unless the album is allowed to breathe. Like an audio Magic Eye, Worm in the Womb of the World reveals its pattern only after the static has been accepted.
"One hyphen away from a form of birth control, Medroxy Progesterone Acetate delineates barren ground indeed, infested only by spiky, parched plants and horned lizards with sandpaper tongues and a taste for human flesh. Dry winds bring dusty whirlwinds bearing decaying wreckage from homesteads long since abandoned. But still, there’s a rhythm to this wasteland, one that sustains the foul creatures lying therein. A feral voice, buried deep in the tracks’ layers, ranting indecipherable instructions. A tonal wellspring, whose succor is only implied, never granted.
"Though noise usually beams from Michigan or Brooklyn or some such hotbed of musical connectivity, Medroxy Progesterone Acetate works alone. From Iowa. Yes, Iowa, land of corn and meth, and the more I think about it, the more it fits. Endless stretches of rural monotony and utter isolation inspire such unmoored fits. Informed by mysterious, crackly AM radio transmissions and cicada song, croaking preachers and occult arcana, MPA has crafted a personal mythology I am unlikely to decode anytime soon.
"While this form of madness has become oddly chic in niche circles, MPA certainly is not capitalizing. For one, these recordings date back years. For another, his singularity of vision would scare off those looking for a cheap, scene-riding high. Genuine terror lurks in WWW. Somewhere below the sounds, between the sounds, away from and around the tape itself. Totally baffling and incredible." -Bryan Berge, Stylus Magazine
"Worth it for the titles alone, this baby receives the highest recommendation around these parts. A must for zealots into Electronic Voice Phenomena, the sound of broken appliances, ketamine experimentation, and other deep Gnostic gush." -CDM, Rebis
"Words just dont do justice how pretty this is." -Gmoryx
"This is kind of interesting -- power electronics with the same kind of absurdist presentation as irr. app. (ext)., but with a sense of humor in the titles (my favorite is "i figured power electronics would be a good way to meet girls"). The opening track, "something terrible is about to happen," is filled with shuddering drone, sweeping waves of resonant sound, and various kinds of forbidding electronic edginess. There's some serious crunch at work on "despite what you may have read on the internet, iowa is not the new michigan" (along with piercing tones and various scraping, rumbling sounds), and a lot of high-pitched painfulness nearly (but not quite) drowning out the samples from television and elsewhere on "the great hum goddess in the sky is trying to tell you something," which metasizes into a howling screechfest like a whirling hall of knives processed through an enormous echo chamber. The final track, "you are my sunshine," is a trip through the land of droning, dying machines -- more subtle than some of the tracks, but definitely still dedicated to the Big Hum (and noise). The insert beseeches the listener to donate to the Heresee Recovery Project (a worthy cause, indeed), leading me to suspect this is a side-project of something else, not that it matters. Strange, cryptic, yet ultimately interesting stuff, about as much drone as it is power electronics." -The One True Dead Angel #7
