HR078 - Mental Anguish & Pat Grafik - Sin City - C60 — 1988
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A Side:
Chemical Fruition Meat Machine Musick Our Home Masked & Treated B Side: Panoramik View From The Land Of Mickey Ether 2-(Version) |
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
Sin City is a collaboration between Chris ‘Mental Anguish’ Phinney and Pat Grafik (Columbus, Ohio). Roaring out the starting gate with a space effects and voice samples offensive is ‘Chemical Fruition’. It’s one big sci-fi glom of incessantly pulsating scratches, head throbbing phased swirls, drone tones, party line rambling voices, and a noodling melody that is just as toy instrument as it is eerie alien. ‘Meat Machine Musick’ is similar but noisier and has more of a hypnotic, sci-fi, industrial, acid trip vibe. There’s a voice that sounds like a freaky Zacherle horror fest host, narrating a freaked out ensemble of effects. ‘Our Home’ picks up where ‘Meat Machine Musick’ left off but has a prominent, disorienting mega-throb that’s like part of an interstellar Frankenstein’s laboratory, plus garbled, lost soul voice samples from an alter-dimension. ‘Masked & Treated’ features a gurgling throb-drone that creates a slowly pulsating foundation for a voice sample medical conversation, colored by noise-static radio waves and atmospherics.
Side B opens with ‘Panoramik View From The Land Of Mickey’, which starts off sounding like a drugged alien country hoedown with a demon baby lead singer. But it soon settles into a cavernous, rumbling noise-drone-windswept pulse. And along the way we’re treated to various tones, pulses, and soundscapes, while the demon baby coos, giggles and babbles throughout, though there is also an ethereal narrative speaker. This is seriously good fun, sci-fi creepy. Wrapping up the set is the 19-minute ‘Ether 2-(Version)’. This is a little different, being a minimal, though continually expanding assembly of layers. At times it sounds like a space station Noah’s Ark, with the rumbling of engines, drones, and whirring electronics on the one hand, and the oinks and grunts of animals on the other. I like the atmospheric yet busily seamless flow throughout.
INTERVIEW with Chris Phinney by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz(JK): I had only ever heard Pat Grafik’s name in connection with Jeff ‘Central’ Chenault (ITN label).
Chris Phinney(CP): Yes. He was Jeff’s label mate at ITN. They were friends in Port Huron, Michigan and both moved from there to Columbus, Ohio together. He had done a lot of recording early on with Jeff. I think he had heard some of me and Jeff’s work together and wanted to do a collaboration. So we did a mail collaboration.
JK: How did the collaboration process work?
CP: Pat sent me a bunch of material and I mixed it all down. I think he died shortly after. But he was a good musician and fun to work with. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to work with him further. We had plans for me to send him some material next, but it just didn’t work out. I’m really fond of this tape. It’s got all the gloom and doom, radio, wacky, weird, subdued subliminal vocals.
JK: My general observation is that the set as a whole has a great blend of space excursion and experimental music elements.
CP: Oh yeah.
JK: On ‘Chemical Fruition’, what instrument is producing that fun noodling melody that I described as both toy instrument and eerie alien?
CP: That was a Casio with a bunch of effects. I can’t remember what Pat used on the tape. I used the Korg Poly 800, ARP Axxe, some tapes, and a lot of effects. Reverb and delay.
JK: Is the ‘Meat Machine Musick’ title a Lou Reed reference? I wondered if you were messing with the ‘Metal Machine Music’ title.
CP: No. It’s just something I came up with off the top of my head. I never much cared for Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’.
JK: Is the demon baby voice on ‘Panoramik View From The Land Of Mickey’ one of your kids?
CP: That’s my daughter Molly (laughs). I recorded and treated her vocals for that track. The Land Of Mickey title is why to this day she has, or did have, season passes to Disneyland and went all the time.
JK: The way you fit the vocals in sounds so cool, and really creepy in a fun way.
CP: (Laughs)
JK: I really liked the last track, the 19-minute ‘Ether 2-(Version)’. It’s different from the rest of the set.
CP: Yeah, that was a fun piece to do. I can’t remember but I think Pat had done another version of ‘Ether’.
JK: I always have to ask you about the cover art. Where did that come from? It looks like a stone demon.
CP: I’m pretty sure it’s some Weekly World News photo I grabbed. I stole a lot of photos from there.
JK: Finally, just a comment, but I checked and the first tape dated 1988 is HR059. We’re on HR078 now. You were CRANKIN’ ‘em out!!
CP: I was probably putting out one every two weeks.
JK: And they’re all really good tapes!
CP: 1988 was a good year. Thank you. We did a lot of good stuff and I released a lot of other stuff on other labels at the same time.
Sin City is a collaboration between Chris ‘Mental Anguish’ Phinney and Pat Grafik (Columbus, Ohio). Roaring out the starting gate with a space effects and voice samples offensive is ‘Chemical Fruition’. It’s one big sci-fi glom of incessantly pulsating scratches, head throbbing phased swirls, drone tones, party line rambling voices, and a noodling melody that is just as toy instrument as it is eerie alien. ‘Meat Machine Musick’ is similar but noisier and has more of a hypnotic, sci-fi, industrial, acid trip vibe. There’s a voice that sounds like a freaky Zacherle horror fest host, narrating a freaked out ensemble of effects. ‘Our Home’ picks up where ‘Meat Machine Musick’ left off but has a prominent, disorienting mega-throb that’s like part of an interstellar Frankenstein’s laboratory, plus garbled, lost soul voice samples from an alter-dimension. ‘Masked & Treated’ features a gurgling throb-drone that creates a slowly pulsating foundation for a voice sample medical conversation, colored by noise-static radio waves and atmospherics.
Side B opens with ‘Panoramik View From The Land Of Mickey’, which starts off sounding like a drugged alien country hoedown with a demon baby lead singer. But it soon settles into a cavernous, rumbling noise-drone-windswept pulse. And along the way we’re treated to various tones, pulses, and soundscapes, while the demon baby coos, giggles and babbles throughout, though there is also an ethereal narrative speaker. This is seriously good fun, sci-fi creepy. Wrapping up the set is the 19-minute ‘Ether 2-(Version)’. This is a little different, being a minimal, though continually expanding assembly of layers. At times it sounds like a space station Noah’s Ark, with the rumbling of engines, drones, and whirring electronics on the one hand, and the oinks and grunts of animals on the other. I like the atmospheric yet busily seamless flow throughout.
INTERVIEW with Chris Phinney by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz(JK): I had only ever heard Pat Grafik’s name in connection with Jeff ‘Central’ Chenault (ITN label).
Chris Phinney(CP): Yes. He was Jeff’s label mate at ITN. They were friends in Port Huron, Michigan and both moved from there to Columbus, Ohio together. He had done a lot of recording early on with Jeff. I think he had heard some of me and Jeff’s work together and wanted to do a collaboration. So we did a mail collaboration.
JK: How did the collaboration process work?
CP: Pat sent me a bunch of material and I mixed it all down. I think he died shortly after. But he was a good musician and fun to work with. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to work with him further. We had plans for me to send him some material next, but it just didn’t work out. I’m really fond of this tape. It’s got all the gloom and doom, radio, wacky, weird, subdued subliminal vocals.
JK: My general observation is that the set as a whole has a great blend of space excursion and experimental music elements.
CP: Oh yeah.
JK: On ‘Chemical Fruition’, what instrument is producing that fun noodling melody that I described as both toy instrument and eerie alien?
CP: That was a Casio with a bunch of effects. I can’t remember what Pat used on the tape. I used the Korg Poly 800, ARP Axxe, some tapes, and a lot of effects. Reverb and delay.
JK: Is the ‘Meat Machine Musick’ title a Lou Reed reference? I wondered if you were messing with the ‘Metal Machine Music’ title.
CP: No. It’s just something I came up with off the top of my head. I never much cared for Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’.
JK: Is the demon baby voice on ‘Panoramik View From The Land Of Mickey’ one of your kids?
CP: That’s my daughter Molly (laughs). I recorded and treated her vocals for that track. The Land Of Mickey title is why to this day she has, or did have, season passes to Disneyland and went all the time.
JK: The way you fit the vocals in sounds so cool, and really creepy in a fun way.
CP: (Laughs)
JK: I really liked the last track, the 19-minute ‘Ether 2-(Version)’. It’s different from the rest of the set.
CP: Yeah, that was a fun piece to do. I can’t remember but I think Pat had done another version of ‘Ether’.
JK: I always have to ask you about the cover art. Where did that come from? It looks like a stone demon.
CP: I’m pretty sure it’s some Weekly World News photo I grabbed. I stole a lot of photos from there.
JK: Finally, just a comment, but I checked and the first tape dated 1988 is HR059. We’re on HR078 now. You were CRANKIN’ ‘em out!!
CP: I was probably putting out one every two weeks.
JK: And they’re all really good tapes!
CP: 1988 was a good year. Thank you. We did a lot of good stuff and I released a lot of other stuff on other labels at the same time.