www.menomena.com/
www.myspace.com/menomena

Menomena are a Portland, OR based experimental rock trio. For those not yet in the know: Danny Seim, Justin Harris, and Brent Knopf perform, sing, arrange, create, and destroy Menomena songs. They've released two previous albums on the excellent Portland indie label Film Guerrero: I Am the Fun Blame Monster (which garnered a rare 8.7 rating from Pitchfork and inspired them to say: "Menomena are a hugely creative band, and they've managed to make an album that's extremely accessible yet entirely unconventional"), and Under An Hour, which consists of three lengthy instrumental compositions and is the soundtrack to a modern dance performance choreographed by a friend. They're not like other bands.

The new release on Barsuk records, Friend and Foe, (which features riveting cover art by cult artist and Blankets author Craig Thompson) returns to the more pop-influenced stylings of Fun Blame Monster, shining Northwest indie songcraft through a Chicago post-rock lens, illuminating the quiet recesses with an unpredictable, experimental light.

We don’t know much more about Menomena, but we managed to get them to tell us the
following:

“1) Most Menomena songs are the mutant result of what we call "Deeler Sessions."
Deeler is a computer program that Brent wrote in Max/MSP that is basically a glorified
guitar-loop pedal. The result of a Deeler Session is a bunch of loop aiff files that work
together in some way. Later these loop files are often arranged into Menomena songs,
with vocals usually added later in the process, and instrumental parts often being
rerecorded. This explains why most of our songs are loop based.

2) We are exhausted of talking about Deeler.

3) All Menomena records thus far are done completely by us and us only (with the
exception of Mastering, which is usually done by Jeff Stuart Saltzman).

4) the first Menomena album was 99% recorded with one crappy mic.

5) I'm really sleepy.”

 
Be Sure to catch their free, all-ages performance at Amoeba SF June 7 at 7pm.