Drone Records

MNEM - Hegonon

Format: LP

Label & Cat.Number: Sentimental

Release Year: 2018

Note: the Finnish "vintage analogue gear" archaic DRONERS + DROWNERS (who once had a 7" on Drone Records named "Hypostatic Ground" in 2002 .. ) are back, with full effect ! "Quite some disturbing sound, full of hissy distortion and the sound is pretty crumbled and loop based. It rotates and rots away; one could almost hear the magnetic particles falling of those old tapes.." [Vital Weekly] lim. 150 copies only

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.00

More Info

"Judging by the name of one of the two members of Mnem, Juri Kaprov, Mnem is Russian or from
the Ukraine. The other member calls himself 1W, so that's not really helpful. Sentimental is a label run by Edward Sol, who for his other enterprise Quasipop is usually forthcoming with information, but for whatever reasons not this other label, so it's all a bit mysterious and perhaps that’s the point of course. From Discogs I learned that at the core of Mnem's sound there are old reel-to-reel recorders and 'analogue gadgets'. The sound they arrive at it is best called 'old school industrial', with a strong influence of Maurizio Bianchi, or rather his Sacher Pelz moniker from before that.
Quite some disturbing sound, full of hissy distortion and the sound is pretty crumbled and loop based. It rotates and rots away; one could almost hear the magnetic particles falling of those old tapes. The analogue gadgets might be a bunch of monotron synthesizers, the slowed down
percussive sounds from some pots (the reel-to-reel is particularly useful for slowing down sounds) and all of this comes in a loop based way. Mnem add a bit of sound effects along the way, just like MB did, creating dense clouds of sounds from the nuclear fall-out zone. It is by all means an old sound, but not something I for one hear a lot these days (perhaps not keeping up with all the M.B. re-issues), so I quite enjoyed this crude set of pieces; all six of them. And just like them oldie days it comes with a mysterious cover collage, but no concentration camps or pornography this time, so
we've moved forward by now in that department." (FdW/Vital Weekly)