PINK TRAILS by m. geddes gengras
Cassette soundtracks for late nite cruising Los Angeles. ‘Pink Trails’: Clean freeways and dirty sidewalks, exhaust-blackened palm trees and grease & lime juice running off taco trucks. Tape grot synth/guitar mantras for sub-city eye-line fog reconnaissance, bunker hill breaks through the clouds and gets flattened, and frog town becomes a freeway. Maximum east los street vibes for severe downtown dreamers and skid row dwellers.
recorded at GREEN MACHINES and elsewhere 2005-2009 by mgg.
Originally Released w/ DEEP MOON TIME as Stunned 97
ART BY PHIL FRENCH
"...MGG rips the first tape hard unleashing some Yellow Swans-ish zen-through-grime action. Initially hitting your ears with a manipulated tape of hand drums, Gengras lies you down in a coffin in no time and starts shoveling on dank fuzz and synth. This first side is really incredible, so gnarly and throbbing but still so beautifully melodic. A layer of snowy feedback is caked on everything. Some deep sub-bass synth lurches and grinds making be think maybe there really is that underground volcano ready to swallow up LA. Powerful and heavy as hell yet scrappy and detailed too. It's a fighter without a weak point. More and more elements surface Gengras eventually singing something but there's no way to tell for sure what, or even guess, due to the racket. Seriously brilliant piece. The second section of the side manages to come off as even more unstable with speaker cabinets buckling under their power and shriveling up against weird taped clatter. Raging feedback and a lilting melody hit back simultaneously. Going all rock tumbler on us, he's grinding down grit to gleaming gems. Then, Gengras, whips out some tabla amidst the noise and a Moog with the one-way ticket to hell. And we coast out on some raucous hand drum action. So Side 1 down, mind blown. 3 to go.
The second side opens up with the same tabla as feedback begins to work its way back under your fingernails coloring them a grody brown. MGG tries to keep your mind clean with a fantastic, soaring synth melody buried under the gunk. Subterranean tremors start crumbling the interior of this here temple Gengras has built and all the ghosts and ghouls are set free. The voices join for a decayed symphony as the damned march to the gallows, while Mr. MGG is over there in the corner just fuckin' one-finger jammin' on his Korg. He then pulls out the Sun Ra chops he's been hiding, molesting the keyboard and wringing out a devilish extended solo. The synthesizer dies off ever so slowly, bedded in rattles, clangs and rumbling, speaker-ripping bouts of feedback leading to a lonesome melody coming from either a guitar or a keyboard (I can't tell!) At that point, the side seems to launch into a new section with polyphonic organ tones and a random instrument being strummed to death. Before long the competing melodies begin tear each other limb from limb. Gengras beckons you to experience the aural cannibalism.
It's a nasty mess and this is worth picking up for the first tape alone. I know usually save this for the end of the review, but fuck it, Recommended." Auxiliary Out
