Mnemonists - Horde
SKU
21-RERMN1
The 3rd release by this acclaimed organized sound group from Colorado, & their first, classic, which is a high-water mark of churning sonic storms. This is some of their finest work.
"...reminiscent of peering through a mircoscope at a drop of pond water: There's a lot more going on than you'd ever suspect."-Option
"Mnemonists were the precursor to Biota, essentially the same band with a different name, and a slightly more alien quality to their stream of consciousness expression. Quasi-anatomical artwork complete the picture and fascinating visions of this release."
"One of the oddest and most exquisite recordings the '80s avant-garde world produced, 1984's Horde is a mass of instruments usually heard in a classical context--clarinet, recorder, krummhorn, cello--processed into a colorful smear of noise from which strikingly elegant tone combinations emerge. Mnemonists, who later evolved into the very different group Biota, were as much an art collective as a musical group (two of them are credited solely with "visuals"), and they're concerned with texture, timbre, and scope of composition more than pitch here (the ultraquiet "Limbs" is the sonic equivalent of an Agnes Martin canvas). Until the hurdy-gurdy lilt of the closing "Triptych," there's almost nothing here that could pass for a melody--and lots that could pass for a dreaming mind making harmonic sense of a construction site."-Douglas Wolk
"At last the classic Mnemonist LP made available again (the band were holding out for 24bit mastering technology). A masterpiece by the ensemble that would later become Biota, and a wonderful example of their method of work. Up there with the first AMM as a noise classic."-Chris Cutler