It's great to see some out-of-town travelers take the long road up to the Castle. Mike R. (Epileptinomicon) and Mike R. and Zack (MjolniirDXP) are the first of several visitors from the west we'll hear this summer (Metal Rouge on 8/27, Husere Grav on 9/17.) These guys came with a ridiculous amount of gear (full drum kit, two heavy bass amps, several synths) from CO > NY in the hottest week of summer to play their unique, desert-burnt, post-Kraut, spooky art rock for Castle listeners and showgoers in NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and some other points in between there and home.
Mike R. and Zack Writer make up the duo MjolniirDXP, and their three-part set here stirs the gloom pot up quite a bit, with the added color of Zack's admittedly sunny aesthetic—resulting in a suite that veers from LAFMS/Chrome/VDO territory, into cannibal-chomp Italo horror-synth melody, and finally into full-on, Esoteric-style doom. It's always a joy for me to host a band like MjolniirDXP (Thor's weapon, plus a near-death experience, get it?), who are so appropriate to the psychedelic-horror-fuck-noise-mash that is my program, and my deepest thanks go out to Mike and Zack for hauling up all that gear and playing a controlled storm.
Epileptinomicon, Mike's solo beast, is "rock" only in the sense that there is (at least in this piece) constant wobbly rhythm, repeated themes, and a tonal center, though loops and echoed bass, and percussive phrases hover around this center—watching, leaving and returning, like a family of buzzards over a downed cow. "Morning Mug of Hearts" is gloriously hypnotic and eerie, and might even take you back to the sparser, early works of Cabaret Voltaire or SPK. The Epileptinomicon CDrs (on Mike's own Sleeping Giant Glossolalia label) are no less mesmeric, with patiently executed, long-form, grimy lo-fi nightmares aplenty.
Many thanks must go to Jason Sigal for helping to create a recording that, as one commenter put it, "really does MjolniirDXP justice." My iPhone caps of the band were especially terrible this time—as hard as I tried—so an extra special thanks to Tracy Widdess for whipping the curd.
It's real interesting if you play both selections at the same time.
Posted by: Don K. | August 20, 2010 at 11:55 PM
Gary offers a very reasonable deal on the cutting for such tiny production runs. The little bit of filing left for us to do was trivial in comparison.
Posted by: iPhone Application | July 31, 2012 at 12:34 AM