HR027 - Mental Anguish & Jeff Central-I.T.N.
Alternative Communication Through Autonomic Overdubbing
C90 — 1986
Alternative Communication Through Autonomic Overdubbing
C90 — 1986
|
Side A:
Welcome To Hellzone Pursuit Through The Zone Side B: Crossing The Abyss Pool Of Delight Stalking Of The Beast Confrontation With The Beast The Renowned Warrior Is Dead All Instruments C. Phinney & J. Central A co-release of Harsh Reality Music, Memphis, Tennessee and I.T.N., Columbus, Ohio |
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
Alternative Communication Through Autonomic Overdubbing is the first collaboration between Chris Phinney’s Mental Anguish and Jeff ‘Central’ Chenault’s International Terrorist Network (I.T.N.). Jeff is based in Columbus, Ohio and I.T.N. was, at the time, also the name of his tape label.
Side A opens hot and heavy with ‘Welcome To Hellzone’. A space-industrial machine shop dirge is led by a pleasant melody that has an ‘Over The Rainbow’ in space feel, and is punctuated by various spaced out and noisy effects. The melody is slow and simple but beautifully lulling, and is later joined by an electronic bells concerto. Together they temper the cold, factory in space vibe that chugs, thunders, swirls, bleeps and cheeps along. As the piece develops it gets increasingly erratic and lysergically disjointed, with a bizarre parallel of spasmodic rhythms and a whimsical atmosphere.
‘Pursuit Through The Zone’ picks up right where the previous left off, but shifts to a combination of meditative space symphonic and alien industrial sound exploration. Parts of it feel like an intense war in space meets the frantic sounds of a forest teeming with extraterrestrial life. And throughout it continually transitions between intensity and the brain scrambling spaced out industrial whimsy from earlier. The entirety of Side A is like one big really cool experimental space and sound exploration that could be the lo fi soundtrack to any number of 1950s sci fi films.
Side B kicks off with ‘Crossing The Abyss’. A block-like percussive sense of rhythm sets the groove against a minimal ambient backdrop. This all sets the stage for an unfolding succession of space electronics. It’s a fairly busy piece which is stitched together beautifully. There is order among the chaos and even a light sense of song, as well as lots of interesting rhythmic fun. ‘Pool Of Delight’ features cosmic mania that morphs with scrambled rhythms and weird New Wav-ish keys to create a tune that is simultaneously fun and cranium bending. Straaaange rhythms! Love it!
‘Stalking Of The Beast’ has a sense of real song structure, though Chris and Jeff are still deep into cosmic sound exploratory territory. It starts off like Philip Glass minimalism meets Kraftwerk in experimental space, but soon takes on a goofily demented carnival tune feel, though it’s simultaneously cranking wildly through noisy intense space while all along be-bop stumbling and grooving. Love the contrasts!
There’s an aura of chaotic majesty on ‘Confrontation With The Beast’ as the lo-fi symphonics soar, though its dueling with a high velocity electronic swarm and other fun effects. Finally, ‘The Renowned Warrior Is Dead’ has the only vocals on the album. It opens with a scream… “The Renowned Warrior Is Dead!!”, and goes on to yell throughout about all kinds of Alexanders… Louis Alexander, Louis, Luigi, Ludwig being “DEAD DEAD DEAD!!!”. Overall this is a fantastically bizarre set.
INTERVIEW with Jeff Chenault and Chris Phinney by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz (JK): How did you guys first start communicating?
Jeff Chenault (JC): I started dubbing my own cassettes in 1983 and even printed my own small catalog of releases. I was a BIG Konstruktivists fan at the time and noticed, probably in Sound Choice Magazine, that the Harsh Reality Music label carried a couple of their cassettes. I sent for the tapes and once we made contact, we became very good friends and traded tapes at a feverish pace. Tapes of music we loved as well as our own original music.
Chris Phinney (CP): We had been trading tapes. We were talking about collaborating and I told him to send me some material. And we did it. This tape was my first time doing a mail collaboration. It was a learning process. It was the first time I had taken a tape of somebody’s work and recorded over the top of it. I had done a song with Carl Howard through the mail which ended up on the Mental Anguish and Nomuzic War Toys tape (Originally released on Carl’s Audiofile Tapes label as ATHRM001, and later reissued on Harsh Reality as HR290).
JK: So you had previously done a mail collaboration with Carl?
CP: Yeah, but I had sent him a recording where I mixed in samples of a trial by (the late Supreme Court Justice) Judge William Rehnquist. So Carl did all the mixing on that song. It laid around until I went up and visited him and Doug Walker, and we went over to his place in New Jersey and finished the tape.
JK: So this tape with Jeff was the first time you had to take responsibility for working someone else’s material into a finished product.
CP: Yeah. That was my first full mail collaboration.
JK: I think it turned out great. How did you feel about it as your first?
CP: I liked it. We had a fun time. It took me a while to do it. It was good and noisy, industrial sounding.
JK: Did this start a string of other collaborations you did?
CP: I did collabs with Minóy, John Hudak, Carl Howard, Isaac Ersoff, Pat Grafik, Zan Hoffman, Charlie Goff, Don Campau, Doug Michael and Hal McGee. I did three mail collabs with Minóy. Minóy was originally from Memphis. He got chastised for being gay and got the fuck out of here.
JK: Did you know him in person in Memphis?
CP: Nope. Never met him. I didn’t communicate with him until after he left. We communicated via audio letter. He told me in the first audio letter that me being a Memphis redneck… because he assumed everybody in Memphis was a redneck… but he said a gay man and a redneck recording together ought to turn out pretty good (laughs). He was fun to work with.
JK: How did you and Jeff collaborate? Explain the process.
JC: Chris wrote a synopsis for each track like it was a movie. I’ve got it somewhere. Everything we recorded was done by sending tracks through the mail. Old school man, no computers! After 30+ years of communication, I have yet to meet Chris in person. This will hopefully change in 2020.
JK: Interesting about the synopsis. That’s not in the copy I’ve got so I didn’t see that.
CP: I just printed a small amount of them and once they ran out I never printed anymore.
JK: I love the album title. Any meaning/implication/other?
CP: Jeff came up with that title.
JC: I always liked weird song titles, so I tried to come up with something that was interesting and conveyed the recording process of this slab of analog madness.
JK: Is there any theme to the track titles? It’s at least clear on Side A which plays like one big track, with the titles first welcoming to and then pursuing through the Hellzone.
JC: Chris came up with not only the song titles but wrote a complete synopsis of the entire cassette. It read like a screenplay to a movie. It’s basically the story of a man traveling in his car before wrecking and dying.
JK: The catalog number is HR but both HR and ITN addresses are listed. Was this a co-release?
JC: Yes, when we did these collaborations, there are a total of four now, we would co-release them on both the Harsh Reality label and the ITN Label.
JK: The credits just say All instruments by.... what did you use?
JC: I used a Moog Satellite synthesizer, a Roland TR-808 and a Roland SDE-1000 Digital Delay. Everything I did during this time was recorded straight to cassette.
CP: I used ARP Axxe, Korg Poly-800, Moog Rogue, and Moog Prodigy, Boss 3.5 sec. digital delay sampler, Realistic mixer, Digitech 7.6 sec. sampler/delay rack mount. This was before I got my Art Proverb 200 rack mount.
JK: I want to ask you about the last track on the tape, ‘The Renowned Warrior Is Dead’. I can’t resist asking WHO is Louis, Luigi, Ludwig Alexander? (Whassup with this track?)
CP: Louis Alexander is the guy who pulled the gun on my wife (told in interview for Mental Anguish – Crying Shame, HR033). So he was still on my mind. That’s what all those lyrics are bullshittin’ about.
Alternative Communication Through Autonomic Overdubbing is the first collaboration between Chris Phinney’s Mental Anguish and Jeff ‘Central’ Chenault’s International Terrorist Network (I.T.N.). Jeff is based in Columbus, Ohio and I.T.N. was, at the time, also the name of his tape label.
Side A opens hot and heavy with ‘Welcome To Hellzone’. A space-industrial machine shop dirge is led by a pleasant melody that has an ‘Over The Rainbow’ in space feel, and is punctuated by various spaced out and noisy effects. The melody is slow and simple but beautifully lulling, and is later joined by an electronic bells concerto. Together they temper the cold, factory in space vibe that chugs, thunders, swirls, bleeps and cheeps along. As the piece develops it gets increasingly erratic and lysergically disjointed, with a bizarre parallel of spasmodic rhythms and a whimsical atmosphere.
‘Pursuit Through The Zone’ picks up right where the previous left off, but shifts to a combination of meditative space symphonic and alien industrial sound exploration. Parts of it feel like an intense war in space meets the frantic sounds of a forest teeming with extraterrestrial life. And throughout it continually transitions between intensity and the brain scrambling spaced out industrial whimsy from earlier. The entirety of Side A is like one big really cool experimental space and sound exploration that could be the lo fi soundtrack to any number of 1950s sci fi films.
Side B kicks off with ‘Crossing The Abyss’. A block-like percussive sense of rhythm sets the groove against a minimal ambient backdrop. This all sets the stage for an unfolding succession of space electronics. It’s a fairly busy piece which is stitched together beautifully. There is order among the chaos and even a light sense of song, as well as lots of interesting rhythmic fun. ‘Pool Of Delight’ features cosmic mania that morphs with scrambled rhythms and weird New Wav-ish keys to create a tune that is simultaneously fun and cranium bending. Straaaange rhythms! Love it!
‘Stalking Of The Beast’ has a sense of real song structure, though Chris and Jeff are still deep into cosmic sound exploratory territory. It starts off like Philip Glass minimalism meets Kraftwerk in experimental space, but soon takes on a goofily demented carnival tune feel, though it’s simultaneously cranking wildly through noisy intense space while all along be-bop stumbling and grooving. Love the contrasts!
There’s an aura of chaotic majesty on ‘Confrontation With The Beast’ as the lo-fi symphonics soar, though its dueling with a high velocity electronic swarm and other fun effects. Finally, ‘The Renowned Warrior Is Dead’ has the only vocals on the album. It opens with a scream… “The Renowned Warrior Is Dead!!”, and goes on to yell throughout about all kinds of Alexanders… Louis Alexander, Louis, Luigi, Ludwig being “DEAD DEAD DEAD!!!”. Overall this is a fantastically bizarre set.
INTERVIEW with Jeff Chenault and Chris Phinney by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz (JK): How did you guys first start communicating?
Jeff Chenault (JC): I started dubbing my own cassettes in 1983 and even printed my own small catalog of releases. I was a BIG Konstruktivists fan at the time and noticed, probably in Sound Choice Magazine, that the Harsh Reality Music label carried a couple of their cassettes. I sent for the tapes and once we made contact, we became very good friends and traded tapes at a feverish pace. Tapes of music we loved as well as our own original music.
Chris Phinney (CP): We had been trading tapes. We were talking about collaborating and I told him to send me some material. And we did it. This tape was my first time doing a mail collaboration. It was a learning process. It was the first time I had taken a tape of somebody’s work and recorded over the top of it. I had done a song with Carl Howard through the mail which ended up on the Mental Anguish and Nomuzic War Toys tape (Originally released on Carl’s Audiofile Tapes label as ATHRM001, and later reissued on Harsh Reality as HR290).
JK: So you had previously done a mail collaboration with Carl?
CP: Yeah, but I had sent him a recording where I mixed in samples of a trial by (the late Supreme Court Justice) Judge William Rehnquist. So Carl did all the mixing on that song. It laid around until I went up and visited him and Doug Walker, and we went over to his place in New Jersey and finished the tape.
JK: So this tape with Jeff was the first time you had to take responsibility for working someone else’s material into a finished product.
CP: Yeah. That was my first full mail collaboration.
JK: I think it turned out great. How did you feel about it as your first?
CP: I liked it. We had a fun time. It took me a while to do it. It was good and noisy, industrial sounding.
JK: Did this start a string of other collaborations you did?
CP: I did collabs with Minóy, John Hudak, Carl Howard, Isaac Ersoff, Pat Grafik, Zan Hoffman, Charlie Goff, Don Campau, Doug Michael and Hal McGee. I did three mail collabs with Minóy. Minóy was originally from Memphis. He got chastised for being gay and got the fuck out of here.
JK: Did you know him in person in Memphis?
CP: Nope. Never met him. I didn’t communicate with him until after he left. We communicated via audio letter. He told me in the first audio letter that me being a Memphis redneck… because he assumed everybody in Memphis was a redneck… but he said a gay man and a redneck recording together ought to turn out pretty good (laughs). He was fun to work with.
JK: How did you and Jeff collaborate? Explain the process.
JC: Chris wrote a synopsis for each track like it was a movie. I’ve got it somewhere. Everything we recorded was done by sending tracks through the mail. Old school man, no computers! After 30+ years of communication, I have yet to meet Chris in person. This will hopefully change in 2020.
JK: Interesting about the synopsis. That’s not in the copy I’ve got so I didn’t see that.
CP: I just printed a small amount of them and once they ran out I never printed anymore.
JK: I love the album title. Any meaning/implication/other?
CP: Jeff came up with that title.
JC: I always liked weird song titles, so I tried to come up with something that was interesting and conveyed the recording process of this slab of analog madness.
JK: Is there any theme to the track titles? It’s at least clear on Side A which plays like one big track, with the titles first welcoming to and then pursuing through the Hellzone.
JC: Chris came up with not only the song titles but wrote a complete synopsis of the entire cassette. It read like a screenplay to a movie. It’s basically the story of a man traveling in his car before wrecking and dying.
JK: The catalog number is HR but both HR and ITN addresses are listed. Was this a co-release?
JC: Yes, when we did these collaborations, there are a total of four now, we would co-release them on both the Harsh Reality label and the ITN Label.
JK: The credits just say All instruments by.... what did you use?
JC: I used a Moog Satellite synthesizer, a Roland TR-808 and a Roland SDE-1000 Digital Delay. Everything I did during this time was recorded straight to cassette.
CP: I used ARP Axxe, Korg Poly-800, Moog Rogue, and Moog Prodigy, Boss 3.5 sec. digital delay sampler, Realistic mixer, Digitech 7.6 sec. sampler/delay rack mount. This was before I got my Art Proverb 200 rack mount.
JK: I want to ask you about the last track on the tape, ‘The Renowned Warrior Is Dead’. I can’t resist asking WHO is Louis, Luigi, Ludwig Alexander? (Whassup with this track?)
CP: Louis Alexander is the guy who pulled the gun on my wife (told in interview for Mental Anguish – Crying Shame, HR033). So he was still on my mind. That’s what all those lyrics are bullshittin’ about.