Daniel Menche

[jcg]

Here is the long overdue DANIEL MENCHE thread, prompted by a recent discussion about Field of Skin from the “what are you listening to” thread…

I highly recommend Vent, from the same era. It's a nice mix of noisy textures, tactile sounds and uncomfortable drones. I'm not so fond of Static Burn, it's somewhat similar to Field of Skin but not quite as interesting, IMO. Legions in the Walls is cool, really dense walls of sound, barely changing. Crawling Towards the Sun is a nice drone piece, as well, but I kind of stopped keeping up with his output around that time. That said, I really enjoyed his afternoon live performance in NYC during Erstquake 2.

Thanks Joda, they're appended to the short list.

Personally, I have been consistently impressed by most of what I’ve heard from the guy. I simply think he’s one of the few giants of the US experimental scene of the 2000’s.

I wonder what other people think about his body of work... What aspect of his music do they like/dislike? Do they perceive different periods in his output? And what are their recommendations obviously?

There’s quite a bunch of material to d/l from Menche’s site, mostly lossless files of some OOP records. This includes remastered versions of Legions in the Wall (great!) and October’s Larynx (even greater!). Together We Shall Melt the Moutains with Our Blood is worth hearing too.

It’s really hard to come up with a list of major Menche’s records. Out of the ~15 releases I know, my personal favorites are perhaps:

Beautiful Blood (2003)
Jugularis (2006)
The Face of Vehemence (2002)
October’s Larynx (2001)
Creatures of Cadence (2006)

I’d be curious to hear reports on his collaborations with John Wiese or Zbigniew Karkowski (I know both are on disc).



Now discuss!

[Chromosome]

I just ordered The Face of Vehemence [Ground Fault] after a suggestion from my buddy. I'll give some input after it arrives. I have never really listened to anything by Menche except for maybe a few seconds of a track. I'm glad there's a thread for him here now. I was actually just recently reading the thread on him over at the chondritic board.

[greenriver]

menche is great. i saw him play when he came to australia earlier this year and he used the instrument pictured in the photo above. shit slayed.

i've only heard about 15 of his albums as well, but bleeding heavens, october's larynx and deluge & sunder are a few favourites. some of the percussion based releases (animality, for the beasts) are good too.

[faster]

I only saw him once--and I've said this before--but I thought it was top-drawer unintentional comedy. The sound was formidable (though it seemed to be almost entirely generated by a pre-recorded minidisc or something), but he did these Jesus rockstar poses, dropped to his knees, and even got accidentally tangled in the cords for his shaker/feedback thing. In between "heroic" poses and general leather-pants acts, he had to turn around and squat to adjust his pedals or whatever, which made it a little like a souped-up Star Wars kid for me, just too self-conscious, maybe.



I haven't heard his discs and I've heard they're great, so this is only my impression of a single live show in Portland, OR in 2004.

[jcg]

he did these Jesus rockstar poses, dropped to his knees, and even got accidentally tangled in the cords for his shaker/feedback thing. In between "heroic" poses and general leather-pants acts, he had to turn around and squat to adjust his pedals or whatever, which made it a little like a souped-up Star Wars kid for me, just too self-conscious, maybe.

Ha ha! That's my definition of a great show!

Menche sure loves to expose himself. Many examples of this tendency can be found on his blog, including a breathtaking performance of Menche as a teenager on a local TV show. No wonder he is where he is now...

[Tanner]

I only saw him once--and I've said this before--but I thought it was top-drawer unintentional comedy. The sound was formidable (though it seemed to be almost entirely generated by a pre-recorded minidisc or something), but he did these Jesus rockstar poses, dropped to his knees, and even got accidentally tangled in the cords for his shaker/feedback thing. In between "heroic" poses and general leather-pants acts, he had to turn around and squat to adjust his pedals or whatever, which made it a little like a souped-up Star Wars kid for me, just too self-conscious, maybe.

I haven't heard his discs and I've heard they're great, so this is only my impression of a single live show in Portland, OR in 2004.

He did a slightly similar thing when I saw him play after Olivia Block in Chicago a year or so ago. It wasn't really rock star mode though, and he mostly stayed sitting on his knees like the picture you posted. It was however very phallic centric I thought, with him constantly wacking himself with this rod/ruler type of thing, creating these echoing booms while screaming into a reverby mic that hung in front of him ... like some kind of arty reenactament of particularly harrowing masturbation session or something. The crowd was way into it. Nice show.

[mudd]

didn't think much of the recent duo with karkowski on alien8, but i didn't give it a ton of time to impress me, either.

i'm a lot more interested in the monstrous and deep soundscapes. there's a bunch, of course, and i don't really remember which is which by name. the groundfault disc is good. so is 'furnacefucker', which also has the awesome name.

hrm.

m

[err jordan]

I don't own any of his cds but I've seen Menche play many many times... like I'm trying to think of who has seen him more than me... Lately it's been a real nice cross between the over the top physical stuff and the staring at his gear stuff. I don't love it every time but I'll usually show up and give it a shot, a lot of times it's quite good.


edit- oh yeah AND-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81-n6Gn8GVs

[thenationalacrobat]

always loved the first track on beautiful blood, particularly the beginning of it with the doom heralding piano chords... last track on octobers larynx as well with the bowls and bells is perfectly produced. used to be a massive menche fan and probably still have about 15 releases of his but it just isn't as fresh as it used to be... god damn you paul panhuysen!

[artificial.colors]

his collaboration with kiyoshi mizutani is great,
other than that i haven't heard much else.

[fenneszfan]

bump this thread here....
I'm a big Menche fan. he now has a ton available for direct download

danielmenche.bandcamp.com