Daniel Menche
Daniel Menche has established himself as a musician with a sense of focus and determination uncharacteristic in a genre known for its randomness and chaotic structure. Rather than creating "noise," he strives for order and cohesiveness. His presentation of sonic structures is similar to the way a writer depicts a story, an allegory seems to arise, which uses confusion as a symbol for the imaginative process in its quest for beauty; aural intensity is not a representation of confusion or the chaotic, but a concerted effort to provoke the listeners imagination, to stimulate concerted effort to provoke the listeners imagination, to stimulate thought, generate intensely powerful sounds, and to inspire beauty. Attempting to avoid the theoretical aspects of music, Menche's sonic constructions enhance the mystery of confusion (in its tonal form) in an effort to stimulate the imagination
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Daniel Menche has established himself as a musician with a sense of focus and determination uncharacteristic in a genre known for its randomness and chaotic structure. Rather than creating "noise," he strives for order and cohesiveness. His presentation of sonic structures is similar to the way a writer depicts a story, an allegory seems to arise, which uses confusion as a symbol for the imaginative process in its quest for beauty; aural intensity is not a representation of confusion or the chaotic, but a concerted effort to provoke the listeners imagination, to stimulate concerted effort to provoke the listeners imagination, to stimulate thought, generate intensely powerful sounds, and to inspire beauty. Attempting to avoid the theoretical aspects of music, Menche's sonic constructions enhance the mystery of confusion (in its tonal form) in an effort to stimulate the imagination
blog
Scattered Remains: Early Rarities
2024 stock. Keeping track of the musical output of Daniel Menche has never been easy. Besides his numerous albums and singles, released by an eclectic range of labels, he has contributed countless tracks to compilations, many of which reached only the smallest of audiences. “Scattered Remains” tracks his progress from 1995 through 1999, collecting the best of these pieces, now fully remastered, onto two full-length CDs. With the passing of time it has become nearly impossible to find many the or…
Furious Eclipse
2024 stock. Soleilmoon’s first vinyl release is from our resident noise monster. It’s his first 12 inch record, and it’s a numbered limited virgin clear vinyl edition of 693 packaged in hand made Japanese art paper.
Sacrificed Phloem (Zannec Line)
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* For the first time both long active artists from the experimental / post industrial / field recording scene have collaborated, creating a mesmerizing one-tracker (56+ min.) with many breathtaking moments and passages from the very beginning... an incredible intense new sonic reality arises, full of surrealistic (almost psychoactive) drones capturing your whole body, taking you on a journey to the microworlds of the "more than human" lifeforms... a "Phloem…
Dirge
** Edition of 200 ** Daniel Menche has yet again utilized a piano to create a vast and immense storm of noise and drones. In 2011 he created a piano noise album titled “Guts” that was the sound of a piano being violently attacked and then electronically treated. Ten years later Daniel Menche worked with a grand piano that was in tune and located in a very acoustically sound studio. With carful elegance and care Daniel Menche wove long horse hairs in between the longest strings of this grand pian…
Cuspa Llullu
* Edition of 300 * For its second collaboration release, Daniel Menche & Anla Courtis go further and deeper into their previous steps. “Cuspa Llullu” is an intense journey through a kaleidoscopic sound labyrinth which seems to come from nowhere/everywhere.
Side A moves into metallic corridors with multi-layered surfaces which keep changing until its last second. Side B begins outdoors but somehow it soon starts visiting several inner regions until it reaches its final climax. But what is exactly…
Primal Fictions
**200 copies** “Primal Fictions” may sound like the early work of a literary novelist, but words are not Daniel Menche's chosen form of expression - instead, sound and noise form the foundation of his 30 year dedication to abstract sonic exploration. “Primal Fictions” (LP) released by Ferns Recordings is a prime display of Menche’s unique approach to field recordings and electronic manipulation. An earthly marriage of the acoustic and electronic worlds, “Primal Fictions” is a stunning example of…
MMXX Bundle #1
This special bundle collects the first five releases in the MMXX Series: Franck VigrouxJohn DuncanCM von HausswolffReinier Van HoudtDaniel MencheMatière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series. In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls, available individually or as a bundle. Each record is limited at 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl f…
MMXX-05
Rounding out the batch of Matière Mémoire Éditions’ first five releases in the MMXX series comes Daniel Menche, a musician and composer based in Portland, Oregon, who has been actively on the scene since the late '80s.His catalog of recordings - solo and in collaboration with notable figures like William Fowler Collins, Alan Courtis, and Kevin Drumm, among others - is sprawling, covering a vast range of discrete fields, from electro-acoustic, noise, and dark ambient musics, to field recording an…
Melting Gravity
**300 copies** Daniel Menche follows up his triple CD opus Sleeper with the razor drone constructs of Melting Gravity. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Menche is an iconic musician with three decades working with intense noise, immersive ambience, and turbulent field recordings. With Melting Gravity, Menche continues to carve his spot as a figurehead in the experimental community. The title refers to an allegory on the human pursuit of transcendence with all of its connotations to weightlessness, …
Nox
Daniel Menche is a prolific musician whose work in the fields of noise and experimentalism displays both savage tactile expressionism and masterful studio manipulations. Aaron Turner is an equally prolific artist whose output veers from violent guitar architectures to textural meditations. Consequently, their collaborative album Nox could have been a brutish exercise in punishing frequencies and aural assaults. Instead, Nox is what Turner describes as “a combo of Daniel’s more free-flowing form …
Sleeper
Daniel Menche is best known for his assemblages of visceral, industrial-strength noise. In such head-rinsing recordings as Vilké (2013), Deluge (2003), and Fields of Skin (1997), Menche's compositional directives instigate and exacerbate the physiological properties of anxiety -- increased blood pressure, blurred vision, claustrophobia, panic, disorientation, etc. In the hands of a talented composer such as Menche, noise can be demonstrative, cathartic and even communal. But after three decades …
Crater
There are profound forces that enmesh the minds, bodies, and souls of these venerable artists. Mamiffer unfurls darkened hymns and sprawled abstractions authored by Faith Coloccia in partnership with Aaron Turner. Daniel Menche stands as a stalwart noise technician of many years, with his blood and sweat permeating all of his adrenaline fueled recordings and performances. Collectively, they design sound to slip between the formally defined practices of metal, noise, song, and drone, offer…
Raised Coils Of The Giant Serpent Of Eternity / I Heard Only The
Opening the album with a harmonious set of gently spiraling tones, Daniel Menche’s piece “Raised Coils of the Giant Serpent of Eternity” offers only this brief moment of serenity before a headlong dive into a cacophonous abyss of darker dimensions. Suspended in pools of liquid bass, layers of molten brass hover, dissolve and reappear. Pitches rise and fall, intersecting for brief periods of melodic convergence before crumbling again into heaving slabs of rumbling dissonance. Closing out t…
Vilke
Julian Cope Review on Head Heritage Site: VILKÉ is the particularly fine and sprawling new 2LP by American composer, field recordist and hiker Daniel Menche. Inspired by the wolves of his travels in the N. West and named for the Lithuanian for ‘she-wolf’, VILKÉ presents us with four side-long pieces of haunted and eerie atmosphere music whose dilating post-industrial rhythms, and seemingly ever-decaying, ever-degrading, cicadas-driven post-industrial drone-o-drudge inhabits a parallel half-world…
Marriage of Metals
In its history throughout millennia it is fair to say the Gamelan has never had an encounter quite like this. Marriage of Metals is a devastating extension of the harmonic properties found in the instruments of Indonesia. Daniel Menche was granted access to a remarkable Gamelan studio where he was given full privilege to record any and all of these rare and ancient gongs -- most notably, the gigantic "Gong Ageng," that contains the deepest of deep acoustic bass. Menche took the raw source mat…
Quanta Of Light
Limited, hand-stamped white label edition** Highly disciplined master of visceral intensity, Daniel Menche, presents a one-off album for Touch's great white label series. Daniel's work is gladly accepted by both noise and more "musical" spheres, releasing on a wealth of labels including Important Records, Editions Mego and Sub Rosa among many others. Taken as a whole, they capture and play with a timeless sense of drama and direct emotional rawness that's hard to ignore. For Touch, 'Quant…
Yagua Ovy
Yaguà Ovy is the first collaboration between the sublime noise artist, Daniel Menche, and Anla Courtis, the Argentinean experimental guitarist and founder of Reynols. Based around the Argentinean mythology of the Werewolf, or "the blue dog" that lives on the "Land without Evil" of Mbya–Guarani, Yaguà Ovy shows Menche and Courtis at their commanding best, whipping up a cacophony of primal and natural noise from all manner of objects and instruments. Menche draws out the sound and resonance…
Guts
Deluxe 2LP version. More voraciously bestial soundwork coming from Daniel Menche -- this time, his chosen theme is the piano, in which he attacks, investigates and dissects with the precision of an autopsy surgeon, adding a whole new meaning to the concept of prepared piano, or should we say, unprepared piano, for an all-out assault. Guts lays out quite possibly some of the finest slabs of Menchian sonic mayhem to date. Slightly different track sequence over CD and vinyl formats due to ti…
Feral
Daniel Menche has established himself as a musician with a sense of focus and determination uncharacteristic in a genre known for its randomness and chaotic structure.Rather than creating 'noise,' he strives for order and cohesiveness. His presentation of sonic structures is similar to the way a writer depicts a story, an allegory seems to arise, which uses confusion as a symbol for the imaginative process of total sound purity; aural intensity is not a representation of confusion or the chaotic…
Terre Paroxysm
Terre Paroxysm is Daniel Menche's second release for Utech Records and a continuation in his bringing back the vehement nature of sound. A pure acoustic-electronic recording of storms: wind, ice and rain. The field recordings were captured by Menche and densely mixed and treated in a manner to create a sense of the earth sleeping then cracking open with violent emotion. An air of electronics crackles and slides around the storm recordings in a way that only can be described as acoustic-electro. …