to measure evidence of their existence
Crashing the Melbourne experimental scene in 1993 with their Hawkwind-meets-Ministry-meets-MrBungle project gLOBALmINDfUCK, Bendy and A Demon Sheen are now considered reclusive weird-music veterans. Their duo together, Merge Into Stripes, has been making extremely strange improvisations since 2000, and yet they've only played live a handful of times, and released only a handful of albums. So rare is their output that it is an average of 5 years between albums. But, like Halley's Comet, the long and silent wait is usually worth it...
In the nigh-on-twenty-years that the project has been making sounds, Merge Into Stripes has used reel-to-reel-players, live birds, raw sine tones, manipulated CDs, guitars, basses, DVDs, answering machine messages, small sampling keyboards, and the live human voice as source materials for their warped and fractured sound experiments. On this new release, they add iPhone zombie games, harmonicas, recordings of drums, synthesised drum apps, recordings of birds, and whistling, among other things. In the grand tradition of non-goal-oriented musical exploration, none of the pieces were entered into with any ideas, intentions, or desire, but were crafted entirely spontaneously, with A Demon Sheen creating the input, and Bendy creating the output.
Eschewing proper names for the results of their metamagical electromancy, Merge Into Stripes's first ever recording was named "A1". This naming tradition has continued, with this latest album featuring pieces from the session named "X" and the session named "Z". Having reached the end of the traditional English Alphabet, does this mean the end for Merge Into Stripes? Or is this merely the sign that they have reached a new beginning? I guess we'll find out in another 5 years...
Available on Band Camp, the double-disc release comes with individual artworks for every track, created by Bendy and A Demon Sheen. The Band Camp Portal also includes their previous albums, "To Maintain Diversity in a Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimizer", "To Mesmerise Its Prey Before Striking", and "To Communicate With Others of Its Species", as well as 4 live recordings, which may indeed be the only 4 times the band has ever played live.
Download or stream all of these Merge Into Stripes releases completely free, or donate to the band if you feel it is worthy. The releases are here, for ease of access:
Thank you for your time.
Comments