Hello and welcome to the first in a series of profiles on the various bands in the Mongolbord Surfingturd family. We start with Mana Gunray Serpentine, who originally founded the label to release their otherwise unmarketable music. MGS are a fairly mysterious group, usually very difficult to pin down in interviews and press appearances. As a collective, they see all aspects of their group as some level of performance, spinning half-truths and sewing seeds of confusion to allay the cult of personality. This band is serious, though about what it is hard to tell.

Thankfully they've granted us a little more access to their unique musical world, to discover their origins, and maybe a little of their intentions. We hope you enjoy this quick look back at the band that made all of "this" possible.

Mongolbord Surfingturd










Mana Gunray Serpentine, also known as MGS for short, or M.G.S. Institute for Mammalian Aetiology and Post-Hypnosis Field Research for long, were formed in Calgery, Alberta in 2006 from the ashes of long-running experimental psychedelic post-punk collective Sleepfortress, well-known in Alberta for their heavily improvised audience-participation free-for-all concerts. Following that band's separation, lead members Terrence Crowell and Quentin Phong quickly drew up intricate plans for a new creative ensemble to focus on complex electroacoustic compositions blending musique concrète, rock, jazz and performance art. This new group would allow a more structured venue for improvisation, and would draw from the deep pool of local musical talent.

They soon recruited local multi-instrumentalists Lance Heron of experimental wind quintet Amun-Zazu and Albany Eglibez-Tortolez formerly of renowned punk jazz group Werewolves in a Warehouse, before sending an invitation out to renowned Montana-based installation artist Ivan Ilasko who quickly accepted and relocated north of the border. The band then set into a long Albertan winter of rehearsals and sound-combing. The fruits of these sessions were on display in a series of Albertan performance spaces the following Spring under the name Mana Gunray Serpentine. Already the band were structuring their performances around a single thematic arc, expressing complex socio-political ideas in the form of noisy electroacoustics and irreverent costumes and stage-design.

At this time the group also set up a label, ostensibly to put out the first MGS record. Mongolbord Surfingturd was founded in Calgary by Quentin Phong, and quickly began putting out physical releases by a number of self-funded local artists including alt-country hero Strongarmed Colostomy Joe.

MGS quickly gained a reputation for their complex themed performances, mixing lights, intricate stage design, video projection and music into a musical theatre of the absurd. Montsalvat was recorded that Summer, using ideas refined from those shows, and released on Mongolbord Surfingturd with catalogue number bord01. The album delved thematically into a hidden history of fringe-psychotherapy and underground scientific societies, from which the band's name is drawn, amongst other things. Montsalvat also establishes the band's technique of editing together long-form collages of music out of shorter component parts, which vary in length and style from a spoken-word sample lasting a matter of seconds, to exhausting twenty-minute noise-grooves.

Aux-Drawn and Quartz drew heavily on the linear nature of music, and the theme of time itself. Again, it was developed in a live context, on their first national tour. Featuring thematic techniques such as time-stretching, granulation and sound elements such as a whole room full of close-miked clocks, Aux-Drawn and Quartz pulls apart traditional notions of composition and reassembles them into fascinating new shapes. Notes are artificially elongated and stretched apart, as if frozen in time, or caught on the event horizon of a black hole.

For their next major tour MGS experimented with these time-based themes through the medium of light and dark, exploring ideas of negative space, dark energy and entropy. The band performed mostly in darkness and utilised a specially designed array of sound-triggered lights and light-triggered sounds to bring to life their most vibrant material yet. The band also released a limited EP for this tour, Re: You, featuring a sneak preview of long-awaited album #3.

Unlike previous works, their third full-length Carnifex was developed predominantly in the studio, indeed using the recording and editing facilities as an instrument in their own right. Carnifex is in all senses about cutting – from the literal cutting of circular-saws and knives, to figurative cutting with digital and analogue editing. The album is in some ways an absurd and abstract deconstruction of hip-hop, with an emphasis on carefully edited spoken-word and loops.

MGS are now on tour with an all-new programme divided in four distinct sections, which will likely form the basis of their fourth full-length recording.

Edited by user 25 May 2011 05:13:00(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

James-I can't think of anything I like more in a concert than lots of the good ole' negative space.

John-You guys are one of the best shows I've ever attended. Looking forward to the fourth album.



OOC-You have the best album artwork of anyone on here