Menomena

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Menomena
Evreux, France - July 2007 (Photo by Lee Sargent)
Evreux, France - July 2007 (Photo by Lee Sargent)
Background information
Origin Portland, Oregon, United States
Genre(s) Experimental Rock, Indie Rock,
Years active 2000–present
Label(s) Barsuk, FILMguerrero, City Slang
Website Official Website
Members
Brent Knopf
Justin Harris
Danny Seim

Menomena (pronounced /mɨˈnɒmɨnə/) is an indie rock band from Portland, Oregon, made up of Brent Knopf, Justin Harris, and Danny Seim. All members of the band share singing duties and frequently swap instruments while recording.

Contents

[edit] History

Menomena began as a side project of Seim's late '90s solo project Lackthereof, a project which still continues.

The band formed in late 2000, when Knopf graduated from Dartmouth College[1] and returned to Portland to collaborate with Harris and Seim [2].

The name "Menomena" was chosen for "the way it rolls off the tongue, sexually, or something" [3] and has no specific meaning, although it is often assumed to refer to the Piero Umiliani song "Mah Nà Mah Nà", a staple of The Muppet Show. A recent audioclip from SpotDJ had Brent sarcastically stating that the band name was a portmanteau of the words "Men" and "Phenomena".

Menomena played their first show at The Meow Meow, a now-defunct all ages venue in Portland, in July 2001. The trio opened their debut performance with a cover version of "The Abandoned Hospital Ship" by The Flaming Lips [4].

Shortly after joining the roster of High Road Touring, a San Francisco-based booking agency[5], Menomena drove a 1977 Dodge Sportsman RV on their first U.S. tour in 2004[6]. The aging vehicle suffered many breakdowns along the way. Knopf detailed these issues in an interview with Spin (magazine), "Systems that failed (and had to be replaced) during the tour included the following: tires, muffler, brake master cylinder, exhaust manifold, windshield wipers, horn, side-view mirrors (both fell off). Oh, and did I mention that there were two fires? Not one. Two. This vehicle promptly earned the moniker 'RV Danger.'"[7]. RV Danger (most likely a reference to Seattle band Harvey Danger) was later immortalized in a tour poster illustrated by Tyler Stout, who has collaborated with the band on numerous occasions[8]. Other notable tours in Menomena's early career were with Gang of Four [9], The National [10], and The Long Winters[11].

After several releases and national tours, Menomena signed with Barsuk Records in August 2006. The band still maintains a relationship with their original label, FILMguerrero. It was stated that FILMguerrero will continue be involved in their back catalog and possibly with future vinyl releases[12].

Menomena signed a contract with Germany-based record label City Slang, to release their album Friend and Foe across Europe on August 31, 2007. The band toured Europe twice that year, and their adventures were extensively chronicled by Seim in a Blog for a Portland-based website called Local Cut.

[edit] I Am the Fun Blame Monster!

After giving away several different homemade demo CD-R recordings at local shows, Knopf, Harris, and Seim stuck with the DIY aesthetic of their early demos by recording their first album themselves. The result was their nine-song debut, I Am the Fun Blame Monster! (an anagram for "The First Menomena Album"), which was self-released on May 20, 2003. The album was elaborately packaged in an 80-page flipbook that Seim designed and individually hand-assembled[13] while working at Kinko's [14].

A friend advised the band to mail a copy of their album to Pitchfork Media, a popular music website that Seim "had never heard of" at the time [15]. Several months later, Pitchfork gave the album an 8.7/10 rating, and placed it in the "Best New Music" section. The band continued to assemble the flipbooks by hand and distribute them with the help of online retailer CD Baby until late 2004, when the album was released nationwide by FILMguerrero, a Portland-based independent record label.

The song "Strongest Man in the World" is featured on the soundtrack to the film Paranoid Park, which was directed by fellow Portland resident Gus Van Sant.

[edit] Under an Hour

On November 8, 2005, Menomena released Under an Hour, an album of instrumental music written for and performed with Monster Squad, an experimental dance company based in Portland[16]. The release consists of only three tracks, each of which is over seventeen minutes in length. Stylus Magazine gave the album a somewhat lukewarm "B-" and described it as, "...an interesting view into a band that continues to evolve without really throwing down any breadcrumbs for them or us to follow"[17].

[edit] Friend and Foe

Menomena released their third album (and first via Barsuk Records) on January 23, 2007. As with their first two releases, Friend and Foe was entirely produced, recorded, and mixed by the band. It received relative critical acclaim -- while some websites such as Lost at Sea praised the album for its offbeat rhythmic structure and creative use of melody [18], others such as PopMatters criticized it for presenting a sense of feigned maturity[19]. Pitchfork gave the album an 8.5/10 and again placed it in the "Best New Music" section, calling it "...The first great indie rock record of the new year"[20].

To celebrate the release of the album, Harris assembled a 25-member choir and taught them the various vocal layers of the new material with the help of his mother Diane, a trained opera singer [21]. The choir was made up of other Portland-based bands and artists, including The Helio Sequence, 31Knots, Nick Jaina, Pseudosix, Dat'r, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Corrina Repp, Ms. Murgatroid, and several other of Harris' close friends[22]. The Friend and Foe CD release show was held at Portland's Crystal Ballroom on January 28, 2007. [23]

The CD and LP (the latter was released in August 2007 by FILMguerrero) features an intricate packaging layout consisting of Die-cut shapes, decoder rings, and hidden messages. It was designed by Knopf and illustrated by cult graphic novelist/cartoonist Craig Thompson, of Blankets fame[24].

On December 6, 2007, it was announced that Thompson's artwork for Friend and Foe was nominated for a Grammy award for "Best Recording Package". [25].

[edit] Live performance

In a performance setting, Menomena attempts to replicate the often dense instrumentation found on their recordings without the use of backing tracks [26]. Throughout the course of a typical concert, Knopf plays keyboards, electric guitar(s), and glockenspiel, while triggering various MIDI samples with his laptop; Harris plays electric guitar(s), baritone guitar, electric bass, Moog Taurus foot synthesizer (or a Roland Pk-5 when touring Europe), baritone saxophone, and alto saxophone; Seim plays drums and other percussion. All three members contribute vocal harmonies and sing lead on different songs [27].

In late 2007, Craig Thompson appeared on stage with Menomena at several concerts over the course of a European tour. Throughout these performances, Thompson painted along with the music using a brush and ink on a large sheet of butcher paper. At the end of each show, the pieces were ripped into shreds and thrown into the audience [28].

[edit] Deeler

The band uses a computer program called the Digital Looping Recorder, or Deeler for short, in the song writing process. It was programmed by Knopf using Max (software) [29]. Seim explains the process, "First, we set the tempo of the click, which is played through a pair of headphones. We then take turns passing a single mic around the room. One of us will hold the mic in front of an instrument, while another one of us will lay down a short improvised riff over the click track. We usually start with the drums. Once the drums begin looping, we throw on some bass, piano, guitar, bells, sax, or whatever other sort of noisemaker happens to be in the room. Deeler keeps the process democratic, which is the only way we can operate" [30].

The use of Deeler as a compositional tool was discussed extensively by the band in an interview with Tape Op Magazine, published in issue #47 (May/June 2005) [31].

[edit] Official music videos

[edit] Discography

[edit] Full-length recordings

[edit] EPs

  • Rose EP (self-released, February 2001)
  • Scissors and Blue split EP w/ Societa Anonima (Cut & Paste Collective, 2001)
  • Wet and Rusting EP (FILMguerrero, 2006)

[edit] 7" singles

  • Posh Isolation / Tung Track 7" (Polyvinyl Record Co., 2005)
  • Wet and Rusting / Gay A 7" (City Slang, 2007)

[edit] External links