★Mental Groove Records
Theme From The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex
180gr black vinyl version Entirely a category of their own, fifteen years after the untimely passing of John Balance and the project’s demise, it remains impossible to calculate the importance of Coil. For just over two decades, following the band’s founding by Balance in 1983, it stood among the great emblems of underground music - a full realisation of the seeds and potential planted by punk, bred with the higher realms of experimental and electronic music. Their sprawling, deeply emotive cat…
Passion For Numbers
Chris Korda is an internationally renowned multimedia artist, whose work spans thirty years and includes electronic music, digital and video art, performance and conceptual art, and culture jamming. Chris pioneered the use of complex polymeter in electronic dance music, and invented a unique MIDI sequencer in order to explore polymeter composition techniques. Chris composes and performs music in a variety of genres, and has released many albums on labels such as Perlon, Mental Groove, and Gigolo…
Libellule Ebouli
*300 copies limited edition* Two guitars heard, one played that listens to the second. Two superimposed timelines that are replayed through the disc. Libellule: One side with use of drone. Ébouli: a side where the guitar is detuned as the piece progresses. Guilhem Lacroux designed this disc so that it could be listened to in 45 rpm and 33 rpm. The 45 rpm, as a version of real time - I live - and the 33 rpm version that of the state of suspension, the invitation to slow time. Interview between Gu…
Do Den Haag Church
"A french trio called France, using drums, bass and amplified hurdy-gurdy. They perform only live, in the middle of the audience - turned in to face each other - full on smoke machines and strobes. And they play only one ‘song’ for the duration of their hour-long set. And it’s the most transfixing live experience of intense physical and mental focus. The distorted hurdy gurdy plugs France’s sound into the country’s history of folk music and popular festivities, of communal trance and immersive p…
The Crystal Jaw
* Limited Edition of 100 vinyl copies 140gsm stamped and numbered white label Signed by the artist * The Crystal Jaw is a unique, immersive and crystalline sound creation made by Procession Towards the Unknown (Sammy Sayed, Alan Bishop, Sherif Elias, Amir El-Saidi and Ahmad Kubbara) recorded in Cairo in May 2021. The Crystal Jaw is a 30 minutes soundtrack made for Sandrine Pelletier’s eponymous solo exhibition at MCBA (Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne) in collaboration with Olivier Duc…
Islets in Pink Polypropylene
Mental Groove presents Islets in Pink Polypropylene by Anthony Manning. Half speed remaster at Emil Berliner Studios. The whole album was composed and realised on the Roland R8 drum machine. It followed the same process as the Elastic Variations pieces, with the major addition of many, many hours of editing. Each piece was composed as a series of patterns, of varying lengths ( 5,6,7 bars long ). The stock R8 sounds were embellished with one of several ROM sound library cards ( mostly the Dance c…
The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex +3
**Limited edition of 100 cassettes in a mini VHS vacuum case. The cassette shell is transparent red with white screenprinting on top and is held together by adhesive.** Entirely a category of their own, fifteen years after the untimely passing of John Balance and the project’s demise, it remains impossible to calculate the importance of Coil. For just over two decades, following the band’s founding by Balance in 1983, it stood among the great emblems of underground music - a full realisation of …
Far Out Far West
The sickest French band, a trio called France, drums, bass and amplified hurdy-gurdy. They only performs live, in the middle of the audience - turned in to face each other - full on smoke machines and strobes. And they play only one ‘song’ for the duration of their hour-long set. And it’s the most transfixing live experience of intense physical and mental focus, and there is something of early rave too, the togetherness, the energy, the euphory.
Polymeter
Chris Korda’s new album Polymeter is unique as entirely composed in complex polymeter sequences, a unique way to compose music with a new generation of algorithm, inside which Chris injects DNA of neo classical, ambient and jazz music. This refreshing album will please both those who are into complex musical composition, conceptual music and who are just seeking for a beautiful, emotional and accessible, unique, musical moment. This is a “In your hearts not the charts” album, as Irdial Discs onc…
Mantras
*Triple LP.* In June 2016, the great-outdoors music festival Echos asked Ernest Bergez aka Sourdure to produce a series of "Mantras" set to be diffused in between each concert of the twenty-four hours event taking place in the french Alpes. These pieces were played on the festival's gigantic speakers/ horns system in the afternoon, evening, night, morning, noon... and reverberated fully in the rocky valley. This triple vinyl edition gathers the field-recording-like captures of the tracks deliver…
Garden of Reality
**300 copies** Conceived in the cultural cellars of Bangkok, Thailand, and Geneva, Switzerland, this 9-track LP by Jerome, aka Yantra Mandir and The Dude of Stratosphear, casts a wide net over experimental meditative ambient music, progressive drone, Brahmanic accents, and ritual oscillations.Together, this work represents a 20 year journey in Geneva of musical production, artistic expression, and the melting pot of experiences fused with the rich legacy of Indian spiritual sounds.The LP is part…
Soothing Songs for Babies
Incredible archival LP collecting lullabies recorded at different times and from several countries, co-published by the prestigious Museum of Ethnography of Geneva and swiss renowned Mental Groove Records. All the lullabies presented here come from records published with a copy kept in the Archives internationales de Musique Populaire of the Meg. Lullabies xist in almost every culture in the world: while they relate to the world of childhood, they also evoke the privileged relationship establis…
Japon (Japan)
Double LP-version. 180 gram vinyl; Gatefold sleeve; Includes booklet and download. Ambient/traditional flute music from Japanese shakuhachi Master, Teruhisa Fukuda. The shakuhachi is an end-blown bamboo flute with one dorsal and four frontal holes and a beveled notch as mouthpiece. There are two elements in the name of the instrument: shaku refers to an ancient measurement which is the equivalent of 30,3 cm; hachi means eight. Originally, shakuhachi thus refers to a flute that measures 1,8 shaku…
Ott
Limited to 300 vinyl version live at Ottfest 2014. France set out for a wild mesmerizing revelry of sound. The result is one of their best recordings to date. Imagine Tony Conrad & Faust reincarnated as a french trio in 2014, using only a minimal drum kit, bass and hurdy-gurdy to drone you into another dimension. The music of France is built around the idea that a circular rhythm section combined with the trance-inducing riffs of the hurdy-gurdy can generate an endless series of (micro)tonals va…
Chambre Sonore
Co-published by the prestigious Museum of Ethnography of Geneva and swiss renowned swiss Mental Groove Records, this second album entitled Chambre Sonore (Sonic Chamber) continues a new series of CDs devoted to contemporary compositions sourced from the monumental audio archives of the Museum (read below*). Julien Perez is a singer, songwriter and musician working at the edge of music industry and contemporary art. Since 2012 he records in french under the PEREZ moniker for Dirty (Pilooski, Dirt…
Do Den Haag Church
Mental Groove presents a vinyl reissue Do Den Haag Church from France, repress of the band's now well known live recording in Den Haag, 2008. The recording is raw and the mastering is fat. The first two pressings made in 2014 and 2015 were distributed confidentially and during the numerous live performances of the band. This pressing features brand new artwork. "France is a French trio that uses drums, bass and amplified hurdy-gurdy. They only perform live, in the middle of the audience - turned…