minorarc

It wasn’t that long ago that our old project Mystral Tide declared that the days of solo performance were over. Having moved forward into a band project with Ben of Cassandra’s Myth and Duncan of BasticH it was clear that performing with musical friends was astoundingly more intensive, sonically interesting, and definitely a more comfortable experience for a fairly introverted musician such as… well… I had always been.

Yesterday this rule was broken… possibly for the last time, when Minorarc performed tracks for the first time ever in a live setting… although once again as a solo outfit. Exhausted from the days preceding, Minorarc began at 7.30pm and played 30 minutes of dark piano and metal influenced material to a small but appreciative audience. It was an honour to be invited to perform, and also great to acquire new music by Noistruct and Pselodux. There are some very talented and highly skilled musicians out there, and for those that appreciate something new, challenging, and different… there is a universe of unexplored music in Melbourne for the taking!

It was a very beneficial experience also in terms of sound, as hearing elements of the music at a loud volume has given me some more direction in terms of the initial mixing of the upcoming album. It is very close… so close we can smell it… yet there remains a great deal of tweaking to be done.

We hope to see you when Minorarc performs live again… and with an ounce of luck… our contributing artists will hit the stage with us. Till then, we will be here alone, in the studio, attempting to finish an album which has pushed me to the boundaries of sanity, patience, and joy, since April this year.

Turn up the reverb, and break out the beats…

Ivan

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We are still working hard on our debut album, and are also pleased to announce our second ever public performance! Because our contributors and guest artists are busy recording we will be presenting a mix of Minorarc tracks and Mystral Tide pieces, solo, and in a minimal format at…

NOISTRUCT – POPMASH IS DEAD (8-BIT001) 12″ RECORD LAUNCH

acid techno/dark experimental electronic/breakcore/hardcore/gabber

http://www.myspace.com/noistruct

http://soundcloud.com/noistruct_mandark

Yes. The day has finally come. To celebrate the release of his first ever vinyl release on Perth label 8-Bit Recordings. Noistruct returns to his beloved former homestead of Melbourne to break some core, fuck some step, gab some ber, d-jung some le and other creative core adjectives that could describe the noisy shit he’s been pumping out for the last 12 years!! Attacking The Barleycorn Hotel, playing tracks from the new record “Popmash Is Dead”, the upcoming Night Terror Recordings album “Front Toward Enemy” and other new tracks from the last year or so he’s made to distract him from being analysed by bewildered doctors, plugged into and scanned by machines and feeling like he’s in the movie “Altered States” this will be the first of two Noistruct shows in Melbourne in that weekend…

http://www.myspace.com/mothballzee

Check out Bukkake Beat FM every Thursday Night from 7-9pm

Making his first ever appearance in Melbourne. Mothball Z has become a familiar name and face in Australian breakcore over the last few years. Apart from releases on Melbourne’s “Night Terror Recordings”and New Zealand’s “God Rekidz”and appearances on local and overseas compilations.He is the host of the Bukkake Beat FM web radio show every Thursday Night. A show which is becoming increasingly popular and notorious for it’s theme driven playlists. With influences like early industrial, experimental noise and old school computer games. Mothball Z’s music is as erratic as his radio show. One minute it’s old school rave synths and swirling warm pads that suddenly glitch sharply between lightspeed-gabber kicks and severed old school breaks. The next it’s vocoder rapped, head nodding hip hop or brooding, mechanical ambience before returning to 4/4 kick drum poundings and bludgeoned TV samples. Leaving you feeling like you friends went home without you while you were peaking and you were fingered with a broken glowstick.

http://www.myspace.com/sadoliveshere

One of the best breakcore acts in Australia. Sado has risen from punting at warehouse parties and breakcore gigs to becoming one of Melbourne’s most respected breakcore producers and promoters. Beginning with blistering sets at “Illegal Frequencies” and the “Public Disgrace” parties. To recent shows like “Hard Rubbish” and “Embolism” Sado is one of the few, who retains an evil and menacing element to his music and never fails to impress punters and wipe the floor with producers and DJs twice his age. The return to an older digital hardcore and darkstep sound that he brings is a breath of fresh air in a time of overwhelming popmash. Making his inclusion to this lineup (as always) imperative. Look for him in an upcoming support slot with Belgium dark dnb destroyer “Cooh”.

http://www.myspace.com/erroristtherek

A Unique producer of breakcore. Guts never seems to follow any set guideline or path in making his music. A long time member of the Melbourne breakcore/hardcore and experimental/noise community. Guts approach to playing live is unpredictable and destructive and a lot more in common with a grindcore show or extreme noise abuse then anything electronically or DJ driven. Although he has been known to use vinyl decks in his sets. Rather than cleanly slicing breaks and arranging kicks into a recognisable 4/4 state. He bludgeons his kicks with a paving slate and crams his breakbeats, unevenly and on top of each other along with every sound and from every source possible. Like an outbreak of techno gastroenteritis, you’re never sure if it’s coming, or going, if it’s stopped or just pausing and if it’s safe to get off the bowl now and empty the bucket in front of you. Talk back radio, country and western, commercials, hip hop, industrial, grindcore and self recorded sounds are just some of the elements which create the unnerving soundscapes that pour out of guts’ skull, onto his screen and then onto the dance floor. Like a drunken redneck, looking down and smirking at you in a country pub who always waits til you think it’s over before smashing another glass into your face.

http://pselodux.bandcamp.com/

The mode of a thousand x’es (thankyou. I’m here all week. try the fish) The launch of the first 8-Bit Recordings record would not be right without another 8-Bitter” along side to launch it. Pselodux has been producing electronic music since high school under a variety of names and a variety of styles. Beginning with “Negative Alpha Index” and one half of the duo “Fragile Nine”. Pselodux has been playing live for 9 years now, since first performing at “VOID” in Perth in 2001. Recently he has been moving more and more towards a layered, acid techno sound. His recent releases on the website bandcamp.com “Galaxy Of Moving Objects” and “City Fighter Jacky In Poke World” have been a great example of this and have received positive reviews as well as downloads and sales. Although Pselodux has been making this sort of sound of late. He might just get up there and play guitar or just Genesis songs. you never know.

http://dawnindustry.com

Mystral Tide will be providing a darker, more ambient twist to the night’s precedings. Mystral Tide/Minorarc is another well known face in the Melbourne electronic scene as organiser for regular experimental night “Enzyme” as well as his usual performances with his band members as “Mystral Tide”.

Lately he’s been working on an upcoming zine on Melbourne’s electronic/experimental scene so we’re lucky to get him for a special laptop performance at the launch.

check out the Dawn Industry website for more.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=105545356161578&ref=mf

SATURDAY AUGUST 28TH
BARLEYCORN HOTEL
177 JOHNSTON ST COLLINGWOOD
$8 EARLY START 6PM

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Around a month ago we headed to Hydra studios in Melbourne to lay down vocals for four tracks. Since then we have expanded to 11 full tracks in progress, of which around half are close to being called “finished”. We have also been doing the initial mixing of guest vocals by Ben of Cassandra’s Myth into numerous tracks.

The vocal mixing phase… as expected is not only time consuming, but also painful. It is looking likely however that this first release by the project will make it out before the end of the year.

In other news we are now testing a Roland UA-25 EX sound card connected via a top quality Kimber USB cable. This appears to have led to much cleaner sound for monitoring off laptop while on the move!

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As well as Bass guitar by Brett from Sarcophony (which has now been mixed in), several tracks in development have also been passed to our good friend Ben of Melbourne electro-industrial-pop project Cassandra’s Myth.  We have for a long time been inspired (and awed) by the vocal techniques and quirks in the technicalities of CM, and his early experimentations are looking tasty! Some hard studio time is coming up laying down vocal tracks, and then it is time for the long hard lumpy road of final production.

If you want a taste of Cassandra’s Myth try out his mind blowing full album available at:

http://cassandrasmyth.com/download/CMYTH_MAINTENANCE_2009.zip

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The last month has led to huge progress, there are now 8 tracks worked and awaiting vocals, and 2 in early development. At this rate we expect to be able to release a full album well before the end of the year. The creative tsunami has hit, and we will be surfing it all the way to the land of the “Album”.

Also many thanks to Brett of Melbourne underground solo Industrial-Metal band Sarcophony who has recorded bass guitar parts in three tracks, and also inspired to us record bass parts into several of the other recordings. On the subject of Sarcophony, he has a full album available for download as high-res mp3 and artwork (around 100MB) from 

http://www.demusnetwork.com/downloads/Violence_Album.zip

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On the 11th May we are heading into the headquarters of Inner FM and Infectious Unease Radio for a chat about Minorarc, play a few full tracks in development, and discuss Dark Stereo sponsorship of Infectious.

The show is on every Tuesday night 11pm – 1am Eastern Standard Time (Australia), 96.5FM (Melbourne) or you can listen to the show live and streaming from anywhere in the world at innerfm.org.au

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The Biography is finally complete and active, and two downloads added which are short session samplers of tracks in development.

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Minorarc is a new music project founded by the members of Mystral Tide, a little known underground dark classical, breaks and electronic industrial entity which released several albums across three continents between 1998 and 2010.

With time, performance and musical release… comes pre-conception… and for this new work, we wanted to lay such things to rest… allowing minorarc to grow independently, and from roots spread within a range from classical music to progressive metal. We invite you take this journey with us as we develop our first album.

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