we're a monotonous band
[2007, musicyourmindwillloveyou]

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.

Slaughterhouse Champs