THE KISS OF LIFE

A – Burning (16:58)
B – The Kiss (16:57)

This tape is released as a handnumbered edition of 85.

Two pieces for analog/digital modular synthesizer & Multivox MX-201

recorded live on 10/05/11 at Green Machines L.A.

Cover Art by Johannes Schebler



"M. Geddes Gengras, hip cat and modular wizard from the City of Angels with a bunch of tapes out on various imprints like Stunned Records, Full Of Nothing and Sacred Phases is delivering two sidelong tracks like solar wind straight from the heart of the sun: bubbling and boiling hot psychedelica. Mindmelting! Can you stand the heat?" - sicsic

The newest tape offering from the LA knob twiddler M. Geddes Gengras is the Kiss of Life, released by the German imprint SicSic Tapes in their probably best batch to date (including, beside MGG, Panabrite and Innercity). The Kiss of Life is a burning, zonked out tapestry of fried electronics trying to submit to an ever-present pulsing rhythm. The fierce sound of the first piece, taking up entire side A is summed up in a simple title: “Burning”. The frenetic pace of this piece, among with glitched out, acerbic electronic textures, stacked upon one another might remind one of the spazzy tek-no muzik of KPLR. There is little, if any, melody in this piece, the only agent bringing the relative piece to the chaotic synthesizer sounds is the sequencer, which is always there, in the background: dictating a fast, stern tempo to which other sounds have to submit, emerging at the top for just a few seconds. “Burning” is an electronic equivalent of an actual fire: there’s a slow, calm set-up, there’s a sudden burst of flames and there’s a long, intense period of heat and destruction before the whole thing dies down by itself.

Side B’s “The Kiss”, follows the similar path, although it’s even less structured in the beginning: high-pitched, abrasive and noisy synth patches pierce through the eerie rising and falling drone with a shy, needle-like melody rising from the droning soundscape in a manner similar to the States series by Greg Davis. After some time, however, the melody emerges on top of jagged, pulsing sounds and marks its reign above the sea of modular madness. This is not an intimate, romantic kiss however: this is a nervous kiss, a desperate kiss, with lips frotting against one another in a frenetic, violent manner. The whole album’s name is reflected in the cassette’s convulsions: it is the kiss, bringing the turbulent, intense life into the dead body with all its ups and downs, the magical spark, prompting the whole machinery to work at a head-spinning pace. The world needs more music like “The Kiss”. Congratulations, Mr Ged Gengras. - weed temple

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