(07.12.05) MLEHST (All Brentnall) is a project started in the early 90s with the handmade, defunct, art label Bandaged Hand Produce back with a brand-new CD-R vehicle, Belief Recordings to both re-release former recordings and lost gems as well as new work. His works are classically difficult to find and the glory days of cassette art swapping is shrouded in fields of cobwebs, almost impossible to research. Though, through perseverance and sheer luck I located this UK-based creator of much obscurity as we hunkered down to chat for a short bit. My ears were dilated for over an hour. Here’s what we talked about:
TJN/Igloo :: Well, hello. I am so pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you and catch up. You are a hard man to locate; did I tell you how I found you?
All Brentnall /Mlehst: Yes, selling soiled underwear on eBay -kinky!
Igloo :: LOL! Caught me; is that what you call it these days?
I was first turned on to your work by a friend of mine, Joel St. Germain (a.k.a. Humectant Interruption). He very much influenced my delving into a huge slew of artists that appeared mostly on cassette originally like Kapotte Muziek, To Live & Shave in LA, yourself, Wolf Eyes and even some Jason Forrest stuff. In turn I took ten steps further by finding more and more by Frans de Waard, Augur, Crawl Unit (Joe Colley), Maeror Tri, etc. but found it most difficult to locate anything about you anywhere except an unlabelled, yet artfully packaged, cassette (and at the time I had already retired my old Panasonic!). Can you give me a fast rewind on how you got involved in this seminal sound-art trading community? How has it been impacted by the advent of CD and DVD-R’s? Should we now allow this practice to RIP?
AB :: Details are hard to remember, but I can recall getting a copy of Impulse magazine (I think) which used to have a list of labels and artists on the back page. One of the first artists I got in touch with was Shaun Robert (Factor X) who pretty much seemed to keep the tape scene going by himself! Things just went from there. Of course I had to have a label to release the cassettes and so Bandaged Hand (from the french pun – le main bandee) was born!
I think most tape releases were replaced by CD-R’s and for those with a few pounds, the Czechs were providing a reasonably cheap vinyl pressing service. Of course, I (like others) used to use a four-track tape recorder. Now that we can use Cubase or digital eight-track for music creation there is little need for cassettes at all, although there is nothing wrong with the format in my opinion.
Igloo :: The end of an era, so to speak. I have a huge pile of cassettes in a cardboard box in my closet. Much of which will never see light of day on CD. So, aside for a play on the dark side of verbals, where did you come up with the Mlehst moniker?
AB :: It may have stood for something but I can’t remember. The interesting thing is how foreign musicians would find a word in their language and associate it with that: a classic example was the Russian word for “milk” – mlechny (i think)!!!
Igloo :: The lip service of speaking in tongues always makes simple words sound so dirty. What are the intrinsic differences between your new Belief Recordings as opposed to the dusty days of Bandaged Hand Produce?
AB :: None really, just to get the music out in a low-key way again, so that in another ten years there are some more impossible-to-find items out there!
Hopefully I will put some more effort into the design and artwork side of things for later releases but I was always influenced by the early power electronics records and the way they were packaged.
Igloo :: Cover art is where it’s at (I miss the wall of vinyl everywhere I used to go). Could you give me a few examples of these cover designs/artists?
AB :: Yeah, all the United Dairies and Come Org stuff for a start. I used to go to Vinyl Experience in London and see these hugely obscure (and expensive) record sleeves with pasted-on covers -absolutely fantastic.
Igloo :: Yes, United Dairies, grotesquely lovely.
After perusing the web a bit I came across the Elsie & Jack Recordings website, which they have updated very nicely recently, and was reminded of you after a few years had passed. I had a lively chat with Phil at E&J who said that I might have quite a time locating you, but I appreciate the happenstance all the same. So, the last I heard from you was on their first compilation, Chair back in 1997 or so. Can you catch me up-to-date on what has been filling your void?
AB :: The last lot of recordings I did were in 1998. You got Secret History, Fabulous Favorites (20 or so came with a 5″ record too) and the four albums that made up the Black Letter Ballad sessions, and probably a few more bits and pieces (by the way, ask Pat at Self Abuse Records to re-release the History of Mlehst CD-R series which collects a whole lot of rare tape recordings, ‘cos he has the master CD’s!). I put out a few lathe-cut LP’s and then by 2000/1 lost interest in music while working and other considerations took over my life.
My interest in music was been born again when a friend sold me a computer with the Cubase recording system.
Igloo :: Pat is from my old neck of the New England woods. I am sure if you are delving back into the scene then your name and work will pop up more often making the old collectors restless, or is that relentless. Hey, it did for me, and that’s what serendipitously brought us into chat mode. Anyhow, yeah, Pat, if you read this, lay it on us! LOL. Can you say some about how Cubase got you back creatively?
AB :: Just having new technology to explore, really. I’m slowly learning about computers, only been on the web for about 2 years, but once I had exhausted all my usual means of noise-making that was that. I expect the same will happen with the digital stuff; who knows! It’s just a bit of fun.
Igloo :: Your sound can send any listener into either a deep sleepy trance state-of-mind or spark instant spasms. Back in 1998 (seems not too terribly long ago, but it was seven years ago!) Vital Weekly called your Living Without Feeling release (on the always peculiarly amazing Absurd label) “All in all a pleasant journey of interesting electronic music” and compared you to Nurse with Wound and THU20 (not bad, eh?). What do you think about associations and influences? Can you talk some about your approach to how you lay it all down, and maybe some about how your direct personal experience gets folded into the recipe?
AB :: Of course NWW were the biggest influence on Mlehst – without a doubt! Although there is no fixed Nurse sound, people will associate NWW with fast cut-ups and droney bits with perhaps the odd humorous part and that appeals to me definitely and was/is something I would emulate. All the old recordings were put together on tapes that are hugely versatile, especially if you’re not technologically minded (like me) and then layered/chopped/etc, etc. The actual music was created from guitars, a borrowed (and faulty) delay pedal, cheap keyboards, sound effects CD’s from the library -anything that I could stretch and skew, speed up or down, just anything. Once I worked out how to feedback the four-track recording unit (an old Fostex x-26) then control the feedback through an effects unit, well that was that! Fantastic stuff! That was how it all came together, with my personal emptiness (I suppose) as the central theme running through all the recordings. The sexual nature of a lot of the titles came about from the strangeness of some acts rather than an interest in those acts!
Igloo :: Well, then I am ready for my quickie first lesson of Sex w/ Mlehst 101. Fill me in on some of the naughty, abridged details.
AB :: Oh dear, well we had the full range: from milking maids to pony harnesses to anal beads. Then a lot of tracks titled such as “She made me a Sadist,” or ” I am the Mistress.” Pretty standard stuff, although, like I said, my interest wasn’t of a fetishistic nature. Funny enough I did read a review of the track I did based around a live phone performance to a U.S. radio station, where the reviewer commented on the sexual feel of my music -not quite sure about this. Do people have sex listening to this sort of music? Surely a bit of Luther Vandross goes down better?
Igloo :: Ahem. I plead the 5th. (Although, even though it may be TMI, I do admit to snogging to some early Sisters of Mercy in the day).
Change of Subject; I recently saw Joe Colley who performed within an artificial intelligence-based museum installation in Montreal. Watching him use a whole lot of intimate hand-held objects (ala Brume/Christian Renou), feedback from metals and other non-laptop-based electronics brought something quite alive to the performance. Are you interested at all in touring live?
AB :: Well, I did three live gigs before, two in London at an old anarchist club and one in Belgium. The london gigs were great fun – I mixed the sound live from tape at the first gig – at the second I gave a performance; tape was in the Walkman with a jump lead to the p.a. whilst I sat down and enjoyed a beer. A picture of this appears on the Secret History CD sleeve! As for Belgium, it was a disaster really and I didn’t want to do live stuff again. The p.a. man didn’t want to give us any volume, so it all sounded wimpy so after 10 minutes I gave up and packed up. The only highlights were my wife being sick in the gents toilets and turfing Glen Wallis out of the double bed at 3 a.m. so we could have a good night’s kip!!
Igloo :: Zzzzzzzzzzz. I’ve been there and done that. I mean – I have seen the weirdness between the performer and the structure of a club where there is no communication. Though, I hope that hasn’t completely soured you from playing live as it would be great to see you do your thing sometime -and I think there are a lot of amenable places to perform, many more technically sound avenues these days.
Speaking of sound, an almost preposterous question one needs to ask for documentary purposes only -What does the word “noise” mean to you?
AB :: Two things: one, an un-listenable racket. Two: a structured musical event.
To me, I see experimental/abstract/noise etc, as music not art (even though music is art – are you following me? ha! ha!). That it has a beat or is played on instruments or not is irrelevant. It’s the experience of the listener that is important whether a two-minute pop song or ten minutes of feedback.
Igloo :: Lathe, cassette, CD, MP3 -What is your preferred format and why? And could you discuss the appeal of extremely limited editions and how it relates to the listening culture of Y2K+?
AB :: I still love real vinyl more than anything else, though my current collection is tiny due to lack of space. It basically consists of Whitehouse LP’s, the Sutcliffe Jugend 10 LP box-set and a set of 1960 rockabilly 45’s. Can anyone express the magic of vinyl?
As for limited edition’s; most limited releases are limited only because of small budgets on the part of the artists involved and the desire to get music ‘out’ to however a small audience. To the collector, of course, it’s the love of having the rare item and the rarer the better!
Igloo :: I have some of those jewels. Ya, I know.
The Locus of Assemblage is one of those rare breeds of wonderful underground labels that I discovered after hearing your Another Cross to Bear (now officially deleted). They also work with Ellende, Alexei Borisov, Shifts and others who I have known or worked with in the past. What makes a certain imprint so important to you, do you have any favorites, or others you plan to work with again or in the future?
AB :: You mean labels? Well in the old days I wanted to get on as many labels as possible. I think SHF did an excitingly packaged Mlehst tape (deep throat and felching) and Nuit et Brouillard did a very nice double tape set (le main bandee). Other favorites: Mother Savage and Self Abuse Records were firm favorites.
Today, I’ve had interest from several labels and we’ll see what happens. Self Abuse has most of the Mlehst master tapes from the period 1992-1998 so get on to him to re-release those!
Igloo :: It has been most pleasant speaking with you. I have learned some and retained little, but that’s what makes us stronger, only keeping the important bits in check, ya know? You get the last word.
AB :: Thank you very much for letting me ramble on. Ta ta for now.
