(ENDE217) Mandark - Latent Dream Thoughts (2001-2017)

A collection of the best recordings from Boris Otterdam's dark
ambient/noise/synth/film score alter-ego "Mandark" to mark the project's 15th anniversary in 2017.

Mandark is a project inspired by isolationist ambient, dark ambient, antimusic, experimental sound art, found sound, noise, power electronics, film score and synth composition. As well as drug experimentation and comedowns, sleep deprivation, anxiety, medical and psychological disorders and dream therapy.

Mandark originally started in Perth in 2002, although some of the early cassette noise experiments and worthwhile collaborations under different names by Boris Otterdam from as far back as 2001 have also been included on this mammoth 60 track, 10 hour long, totally self indulgent and overblown compilation.

The first Mandark track "Heather" was written by building loops on FL3.5 and recording them live into Soundforge.
It was originally an experiment to see if Boris could make dark ambient music with FL3.5 and a way to continue making tracks after marathon trackmaking sessions for Noistruct. After hours of breakcore production, Boris' ears would get too sore to continue so the headphones would come off, the volume would go down and the record button would capture the results.

Over time a collection of these recordings would become a way to step outside Noistruct and allow Boris to indulge his love of noise in all it's styles and explore his attempts to make imaginary film scores.

For about the first 2 years, all Mandark recordings were made under the influence of marijuana and various drug comedowns. From 2005 onward, this was not always the case. Many recordings such as "Torment" and "Trying To Get In" were made immediately after waking from nightmares and "Disquiet" was made during an extreme anxiety attack.

"Searing" was made while locked in a room during a 42 degree day in Perth in 2012 during heat exhaustion.

"Happiness Is A Warm Cathode Ray Tube" was produced in emergency accommodation for flood victims.

Mandark was never seen as a serious project for Boris until 2005 when he performed his first live improvisation at The Glitch Bar in North Fitzroy Melbourne. Mandark did a handful of shows in Melbourne and Perth between 2005 and 2013, but it is primarily a studio project.

In 2008 at the behest of label head Matt Bleak. Mandark released a split with Noistruct on Night Terror Recordings - his first release. This was followed up by the first full length album "Parasomnia" released on bandcamp through Perth experimental/breakcore label "8-Bit Recordings" in 2011.

There has been 30 releases and 11 appearances on compilations between 2008 and 2015. All releases are digital with a handful of limited run CDrs.

As Boris became more comfortable with production with Noistruct. Many of the Mandark recordings would become cannibalised for Noistruct tracks. Sometimes this meant cutting pieces of tracks out or using entire recordings. This sometimes resulted in a Mandark track being released as a basic "beatless" version of a Noistruct track (such as with "Perturbed") and sometimes it meant the Mandark track would become permanently assimilated into a Noistruct track because the
original recording got lost. Noise and atmospherics being a major part of Noistruct. Sometimes it was better to use previous recordings than to make something new to fit. Sometimes the noise recordings would make perfectly syncopated accompaniments to Noistruct tracks.

Currently it's trendy for "anti-laptop" or "anti-digital" sentiment towards noise producers. A hipster snubbing of noise music produced with programs or software.

Mandark recordings were mostly made with software and programs and VSTS but also with analogue music equipment, acoustic instruments, electric instruments and found objects and microphones.

Being inspired by the original ethos of noise of "use anything and everything you
can to make it" such as was pioneered by artists like Einsturzende Neubauten and
Merzbow. Mandark was never limited to any self policing of equipment used and finds "no laptop/no digital" events and attitudes and the wankers who run them, partake in this snobbery and attempt to enforce it...absolutely fucking boring and pretentious. Noise is fun to make. It's fun to make with keyboards and modulators and it's fun to make on software. It's just fun to make.

Recordings on this compilation have used a variety of instruments and equipment from glass bottles to software and samples to VST instruments to microphone feedback to guitar pedals and to bass guitars to name a few things used.

Someone once joked that Mandark was just random noise with no concentration. This lead to the creation of the album "Internal" (two tracks from which are included here) on UK label Legs Akimbo, which was recorded by by setting up sounds and and channels and then
recording the outcome while not paying attention and just watching TV.

Most Mandark tracks are recorded improvised compositions, some are sequenced on FL and some are pre-planned.

these recordings have clicks and static over them. This is due to the recordings being made on cassette, 4-track, with broken soundcards or on PCs with full hard drives, damaged machinery and demo software.

Cassette recordings were not remastered to leave the original analogue abrasive sound intact.

Tracks 44 t0 50 and 57 are live collaborations. Some were released under different names but were worth including here.