Mentocome – Mentocome LP

Official, 180gram reissue of 1992 German minimal electronic grail by Mentocome.

Formed in Düsseldorf, Mentocome were Rainer Rabowski and Axel Grübe. By the time this record appeared privately, Rabowski and Grübe had been key participants in West Germany’s underground electronic scene. Rabowski ran the cult tape label (and space) Klar!80, one of the important channels for radical post-industrial sound with a global reach that extended to Japan (see the documentary by Yuzuru Agi of Vanity Records). Rabowski and Grübe also played in Roter Stern Belgrade. In the 80s, Grübe apprenticed with Conny Plank and also contributed to Strafe für Rebellion. But Düsseldorf itself shaped the singular sound of Mentocome: this was a city in which DIY electronic music existed in the same world as the exhibitions and teaching of figures like Paik, Beuys, and Vostell, artists whose work imagined future publics and critiqued the nature of mediated perception.

Mentocome’s sole album is a singular and oneiric world, containing cracked and dilated passages of gauzy electronics and hypnotic rhythmic miniatures. At times, it reminds of Tolerance’s “Divin” LP, the fractured minimalism of Nuno Canavarro’s “Plux Quba”, or even Eno, Moebius, and Roedelius’s “After the Rains” albeit throwed and slowed…

Expertly re-mastered by Alex Nagle. Edition of 300.