About Me
FRANTIC MANTIS - born out of an impromptu jam session in Summer 2003 of long time friends in Göteborg, Sweden. Bridging the mutual musical admiration of Håkan Johannson and Per Stålberg of Divison Of Laura Lee and Shelby Cinca of Frodus/Decahedron. Merging the styles of said bands impeccably to create a modern day fusion of punk and ambient rock known hereforth as: Datapunk. Screamy vocals, sung vocals, spastic guitars, 8bit explosions, and no over processing done by the collective brains of the members. Spontaneous and dangerous... two words that even modern day punk music has forgotten. Their initial recording, DATA IS NOT INFORMATION , was lost for over a year after their whirlwind session in the back of a muscle-car modification garage in the "Old Jamaica" style recording complex of Timo Lundgren from Svennson. The files for the session lingered on a hard-drive in Cubase format deep in the warehouse district of Göteborg, Sweden yearning to be discovered.
A spark eventually emerged in the 3 members to locate these recordings after they spent a year's time with their respective bands Division Of Laura Lee and Decahedron. Via electronic and GPS means, Timo was contacted by HÃ¥kan and Shelby, the files were procured in the proper format after one initial ill attempt that contained incomplete disks. Data-punk was almost lost but with luck... it was found....In the shadows of the meaningless billboards that virally appear at every turn.
In the early 1920s, there were still some people in this country who hadn't yet heard recorded music. Not many, but a few. That's less than a hundred years ago. Your career as a 'recording artist' (quote/unquote) took place toward the end of a technological window that lasted less than a hundred years, a window during which consumers of recorded music lacked the means of producing that which they consumed. They could buy recordings, but they couldn't reproduce them. [Insert Any Mildly Successful Late 90s Band Here] came in as that monopoly on the means of production was starting to erode. Prior to that monopoly, musicians were paid for performing, published and sold sheet music or had patrons. The pop star as we know her was actually an artifact of preubiquitous media... of a state in which 'mass' media existed, if you will, within the world.
- William Gibson ([sic] Bigend)
========== REVIEWS ==========
"It's 2005..." are two words that seem to find their way into most sentences about art, culture, media, and politics these days. Maybe more-so now than when the century actually flipped is our awareness of time so deeply intertwined with our notions of culture and entertainment. With that in mind, we may have reached a moment where cultural subdivisions in the underground and indie world are starting to blur, perhaps as they did in the early 80's when punk was an amorphous blob of underground musics that usually failed appropriate description. Frantic Mantis, an all-star group comprised of members of Swedish hard-rockers Division of Laura Lee and one member of Washington, DC's Decahedron/Frodus gives credence to these notions of future music. Formed through a friendship and continued through cyberspace, this is one of many new bands formed and maintained in the metaverse. Except they're not file-sharing Reason tracks, they've got a handful of rock tracks.
In the first dose one might shrug it off as more "loud/fast" we heard in the mid-to-late 90's from the post-punk/emo world, but soon the lyrics hit you with conflicted love for our current state-of-the-art. Clearly the recently dead Washington, DC band Antelope's organic approximation of computer music filtered through Gang of Four plays as a guidepost for some of this, but it can be taken more as a guitar and chaos-infused blog of homage. When the oddball 8-bit songs come through we find ourselves back on the schitzoid path bands like Trans Am, Six Finger Satellite and Brainiac cleared in the 90's. You put your Gameboy in my Hardcore! You put your Hardcore in my Gameboy!! But there's truth in the description: It IS a Frantic and calculated assault of sonic confusion. - Jonathan Krienik (TapeOp Magazine / Boombox Magnetica )
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Frantic Mantis is a strange fulfillment of the call Refused made on The Shape of Punk To Come for a new noise. Instead of looking forward, Frantic Mantis seems to find newness in looking backwardsa new noise pieced together using faulty, decades-old technology by a band existing after the collapse of western civilization. From their vantage point at the end of time, theyre able to point out all of our mistakes with a damning hindsight, as Cinca does when he screams out Black is the truth on the furious album-opener Creation Sickness. Not only is Frantic Mantis both radically new and old at the same time, its one of the weirdest and coolest punk rock albums of the year. - exadore @ bornbackwards.com
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To many, the British are the exemplars of Rock's refinement and polish. For my money though, nobody can distill that most potent of Rock & Roll's deadly elixirs (and no, I haven't got a name for the stuff) like the Swedes can. Data Is Not Information is a scarier and more urgent Future Shock than those purveyed by the likes of Instant Camera or Corporate MF. Imagine the reverberated noise and sini-surf of Strange and the impenetrable obscurity of Man Or Astroman? overlaid with the fuzzy buzz-effects of an old Atari 2600 donkey-tail-pinned to a punk foundation and reinterpreted through the intimidating glare of Arthur Harrison's 490 Sequencer. - JD @ Hybridmagazine.com
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Although bands who claim to have invented a new genre are often sorely misguided in their so-called creation, Frantic Mantis may have actually earned their chosen musical moniker of datapunk. By switching between early DC hardcore blasts and Gameboy squeals, the band seem equally intent on ignoring the technological side of music creation as mining it for all its worth. Made up of members of both Division of Laura Lee and Frodus/Decahedron, the band manage to sound nothing like the members past work. While opener Creation Sickness kicks out the jams like New Day Rising-era Hüsker Dü, it is immediately followed by the clicks and buzzes of Obsessive Online Community Drones with nary a guitar in sight. The rest of the music follows in a similar fashion, balancing ass-kicking hardcore with drone-y electronic numbers. - Exclaim.ca (Canadian E-zine)
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If you require more affirmation by others, read reviews here: SHZine , Left Off The Dial, PunkNews.org .
Debut Album "DATA IS NOT INFORMATION" released 2005 on
LUJO RECORDS / LUJO myspace . Album available for only $5 from Lujo Records Webstore.
Donate for plane tickets.
If you like the electronic 8bit destructo on Frantic Mantis, feel free to investigate Shelby Cinca's (Frantic Mantis) 8bit Electronica Projekt:
Second 8bit album by former screamer, Shelby Cinca. Created during travels and time living abroad with a cat and a Swede. Includes guitar, bass and other instrumentation on top of pure 8bit nanoloop beats. An 8bit IDM journey about creatures that expands and explores new territories only hinted at on the first album "Obelisk". Also includes 2 8bit covers by DC's Antelope!
Shelby Cinca
Electronic 2: Creatures
Tracklisting:
01. Floating Pyramids
02. Life
03. Mjao Mjao
04. Wandering Ghost
05. Pentagon City
06. Thanaton III
07. Shapes
08. Mjao Mjao (Remix)
Liner Notes:All songs by Shelby Cinca except "Wandering Ghost" and "Shapes" by Antelope (www.ant3lop3.com). Recorded at Mystic Gnome Mobile studios using strictly: Nanoloop 2.0, Bass, Dobro Guitar, Sidstation and MiniMoog Synthesizer (Track 5 only). Bass tracks recorded at The Tape Room studios 2006 in Arlington, VA by Nick Anderson.
Listen to tracks at: virb.com/shelbycinca
[ Triobelisk MySpace ]
