DOC WÖR MIRRAN

Doc Wör Mirran is an extremely prolific experimental Psych/Electronic/Krautrock group conceptually formed in 1982 by Joseph Raimond and Bernard Worrick. DWM was formed with the idea of including various other arts under its name including painting, graphic design, poetry (some of which can be found on this album), etc, and coming along with this catch-all philosophy is a revolving door policy of members, the only constant having been Joseph Raimond.

Much of DWM's art is stylized in a seemingly amateurish or crude way, or maybe one could say naïve or childish. Perfect in other words. This first release from DWM is pretty amateurish and crude, but not perfect, unfortunately. Mostly culled from recordings made at the San Francisco State University electronic music class in 1984, and a handful from a few years earlier in 1982. One foot is in the prior decade's electronic musings and one foot in the then burgeoning cassette underground.

We kick the A side off with Life Of The Beached Whale, one guess as to what this sounds like. Slippery and wet gurgling synths give a slight illusion of being in the depths of the ocean, while higher pitched synths squeak and EEEEEEE away, beck and calling. 59 I Pool is a track being played in reverse; with swooping synth sounds, various tribal sounding drums, coming and ebbing in waves. Meeting Extravegance is the longest offering on the A side, a heady stew of metallic droning, burbling synths, electronic insectile chirping, and what sounds like a kettle boiling; all fading and increasing at random throughout the track. Self Automated Patch #1 is exactly as the name suggests, a synth gleefully burbling and whirring and scratching away of its own volition, a bit musique concrete feeling. Avacado Marketing Techniques #1 is the first of the two songs recorded in 1982, and also the first to sound almost musical at times, but also one of the weaker songs here. Lo-fi guitar samples attempt to mesh with droning synths and some looped vocal samples. There's a bed of quiet electronic thumping and droning tones allowed to the forefront for a while, as everything else subsides. The guitar and vocal samples return, joined by non-sampled bass guitar soloing, and we cycle between these two modes for the rest of the song. Help, We Need A Melody is 20 seconds of a harsh, insufferable, screeching tone to end side A.

Side B has the second and last 1982 recorded track, Avacado Marketing Techniques #2, and IMO much better track than the first. Drifting, sublime, etheric bass wanders through oceans and waves of analog fuzzing and hissing. Sounds like a post rock song drowning in a sea of black and white TV static. Pure atmospheric bliss, and very unlike anything else on this cassette. Self Automated Patch #2 is a return to Buchla synth self-playing, not much to say. When A Girl Lives Alone features groaning and moaning treated vocal samples slowly being layered upon one another, creating an undulating water bed for Rich Ferguson to recite some poetry, presumably of the same name, over. Sounds very much like a poem written by some guys in college. Tribute To The Music Of Raisin Bran Trust is a return to longer form experimental electronic stews; synths doing various impressions of whirring fans, various dial and fax tones, watery and laser like burbling, babbling, chirping, and hissing. Somehow this track sounds quite spacious and void like at times, as if all the sounds are being captured out of space. Patchwork Park Insanity returns to samples being played in reverse, though with a bit more diversity than 59 I Pool. Abstract humming tones, melancholic guitars, odd vocal snippets, and what sounds like amplified tin foil being rubbed and scraped. We end this journey on a sour note, with yet a third offering of random nondescript Buchla babbling.

An interesting journey's start for a group with a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies.