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MENCHE, DANIEL & MAMIFFER - Crater

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: SIGE Records SIGE-043 Release Year: 2015 Note: first full length collab. between 'UR-energy-droner' D. MENCHE and FAITH COLOCCIA's & AARON TURNERs project: "Glacial harmonic drones expand from field recordings, church organs, abraded stone & steel, and guitars only to be disrupted by heavily hammered piano melodies that in turn are gristlized by the collective noise strategies, machines, and snowstorms. Alternately, meditative and explosive, imposing and rapturous. Brilliant through and through." [AQ] Price (incl. 19% VAT): €16.00 More Info "There are profound forces that enmesh the minds, bodies, and souls of these venerable artists. Mamiffer unfurls darkened hymns and sprawled abstractions authored by Faith Coloccia in partnership with Aaron Turner. Daniel Menche stands as a stalwart noise technician of many years, with his blood and sweat permeating all of his adrenaline fueled recordings and performances. Collectively, they design sound to slip between the formally defined practices of metal, noise, song, and drone, offering a phenomenological essentialism that amplifies and exaggerates the earthly ele- ments of water, moss, soil, and fire. This can be a sonic transubstantiation of field recordings and in situ object documents from Coloccia and Turner’s home on Vashon Island, Washington; and this can be the aestheticized forms of mythic poetry cast through austere melodies for guitar, piano, electronics, and plainsong chant. The communal production took four years to develop with a few performances that spilled forth. Menche, for one, abhors the notion of collaboration, preferring to qualify this as a documentation of their friendship. “’Collaboration” sounds so... business like or formal or something of a technical term. We’re just friends making acoustic sounds together and recording nature with our hikes together. Then we eat pizza and laugh.” This relational intimacy and interpersonal development brings an understanding of each other’s strengths, and from that understanding, the conviction to extract out the very best that each has to offer. From Menche’s perspective, Coloccia projects a nearly religious capacity for harmony and melody; Turner has grace and fury in his DNA; And Menche quips about his own work: "I’m a chainsaw artist making those touristy statues of grizzly bears but instead of wood I’m using sound.” Ellipses of guitars and piano sparsely populate this album. Upon appearance, these forms are progressively dissolved into a dislocation of machined noise and wintry drone, abraded with the tactility of stone and iron. It can become difficult to determine where the province of negation ends (e.g. emptying the musical structure as a simulacrum of the sublime) and that of accretion begins (e.g. layer upon layer of noise, pressure, and volume to feed a collapse). In this liminal iceblink, the work of Mamiffer and Menche is resoundingly heroic, tragic, haunted, cold, and beautiful. To Menche, though, “this is a very humble recording. When we’re old and grey and come across this in a old dusty box, we’ll have a warm smile. Maybe we’ll play it on our death bed?!?!" [label info] sige.bigcartel.com "Daniel Menche, Faith Coloccia, and Aaron Turner have been close friends for quite a long time now, with this album emerging as the first fruits from their communed relationship. And as collaborative projects go, Crater is a superb document showcasing how each of these equally talented folks in disparate facets of the dark arts (noise for Menche, hallowed / haunted plainsong for Coloccia, and heroic riffage from Turner) can work so effortlessly and gracefully. Glacial harmonic drones expand from field recordings, church organs, abraded stone & steel, and guitars only to be disrupted by heavily hammered piano melodies that in turn are gristlized by the collective noise strategies, machines, and snowstorms. Alternately, meditative and explosive, imposing and rapturous. Brilliant through and through." [Aquarius Records]