The Answer Is In The Beat

M. Geddes Gengras megapost

September 1, 2013 at 10:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

M. Geddes Gengras’ newest LP on Umor Rex has been getting quite a bit of attention lately, but it’s actually a collection of pieces from various limited cassette releases of his instrumental Moog works that he’s been releasing over the years. I have a few of his recent releases and I’ve been meaning to post about them for a while. First and foremost, what really got me into his work was his LP Test Leads which came out on Holy Mountain/Intercoastal Artists. The artwork totally looks like a reproduction of a ’70s/’80s-era Berlin school kosmische LP, the back cover says “New works for modular synthesizer” and features a black & white photo of Gengras in a suit and tie peering over a maze of wires, knobs and switches, and the font listing the songs and times looks straight out of the early digital era. The music fits accordingly, exploring arpeggiated synth textures, but also dipping into some rhythmic beat-based territory, such as the techno track “Night Work”, and getting jittery with the frantic, swarming “Cairo” and the brain-frying “Waldorf (Pt. 3)”. A thoroughly enjoyable LP.

Also pretty great is the Santam Rasa tape which came out last year on Healing Power Records. Definitely more of a paranoid soundtrack vibe, with more atmospheric synth washes and hissing, squealing noises, and also some icy pulsations. It just keeps building and getting more epic and impressive. Hard to say whether I like this tape or Test Leads better, they’re both astounding in different ways.

The Re-Vision tape on Cae-Sur-A is a bit different, it’s a lot rougher and murkier, and it didn’t stand out as much on first listen. Still, it has some nice buzzing, rippling textures. It moves pretty slowly, it doesn’t quite hit you as immediately as the other 2 releases, but it has kind of a muddy, airplane-loudly-buzzing-across-the-horizon feeling to it. Much more of a singular vision, not as varied or progressive.