The mangabros - cursed forever to referring to themselves in plural and third person - are something of an enigma; a group who use cut-up techniques to create their lyrics and music; and make many of their decisions through the roll of a dice (or the turn of a card). And that’s even before we come to the songs themselves.
To pigeonhole them is unfair because they transcend mere labels, but here are gushes of a truly warped, sinuous fusion of beats n bass, (bad) acid and psych-prog/electronica/sampladelia; the bones of Burroughs and Rhinehart ground up and snorted; these are songs, but not as we know them. Here we have twisted tales of inherently evil guitars, cognitive unborn foetuses with the ability to dream and the lonesome death of Johnny Weissmuller. Since their emergence from the ashes of Boolean Matrix in Late 98, mangabros have played a string of rare gigs and festivals around Europe to puzzled but enthusiastic crowds. Their approach to performance verges on theatre, playing in absolute darkness or by the glow of twin burning Technics 1200s or against the backdrop of their controversy-courting dice and anatomical video installations. And their act treats us to such indulgences as the ritual burning of Sir Cliff effigies, dwarves on spacehoppers, shop dummy dismemberment and dancing PVC-clad gimps. You have been warned.
Hailed by Bill Nelson as "brave and uncompromising", and described by Grandaddy's Jim Fairchild as "really good shit that brings back fond memories of places I've never been, which is something interesting music always should do" ...the mangabros have cropped up on various media sources, BBCi, Bizarre magazine, Eerie Power e-Zine ("real innovation…Magnificent…dark and mesmeric…music beamed from the bowels of Mars…"), Melody Maker, OutPost, NME, Wire, DJ ("one of (UK’s) finest exponents of poly-rhythmic dissection"), contributing to a Channel 4 documentary about the Dicelife (described by the producers as ‘deliciously deranged’) and have had entire radio programmes dedicated to their generative koanmusic experiments. On the eve of the New Millennium the dice dictated two things: the release of a triptych of albums (the physical - but not fixed - SLOWBURNBLUE [V1.0]; the downloadable remix compendium SOULCOALBLACK - a deeply disturbing piece of work) but, more significantly, the enforced disintegration of the band unit. 10 years on, the mangabros have been resurrected (according to strict dice guidelines) and are preparing a series of lovesongs for the concluding songset, DEEPFLESHRED (which includes several chapters of the random collaborative noir narrative 'Umm'), and the semi-autobiographical Nazi Geeks & Jeezus Freaks.
Their aleatoric work continues via their alter-ego, Gooble Gabble. Roll on...
