Mental Zone

Mental Zone are currently Working on new Music and are therefore not very active here on MySpace. We are looking forward to present new music to our fans around the world.
Mental Zone started out in 1989 as a band with lots of creativity. The Band consists of two members: Tjarli Majk and Tekno Tarsan. Tjarli Majk has a musical base as a member of different rock and Heavy Metal bands, mostly as a fast playing and skilled riff creating rhythm guitarist. Tjarli Majk is supposed to have one of the fastest picks in the world. In the early years, from 1980 to 1983, he played in diffent music school bands both as singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer and keyboard player. Tekno Tarsan has a background as technician and assistant producer at a major Danish recording studio where he was assisting well known national and international artists and bands. Tekno Tarsan is known for his sense of the details.
Mental Zone is Influenced for the most part by Alternative Rock such as Punk Rock and Metal Bands and of course their own Hardcore Punk improvisation Sessions. In fact, the majority of Mental Zones PsyTrance can be played on guitar and was indeed improvised during their legendary Jam Sessions. Naturally Mental Zone has been listening to different GoaTrance/PsyTrance acts, but those acts didn’t really contribute as influences beside of that special GoaTrance/PsyTrance sound moods.
Mental Zones brand is to be very ExperiMENTAL with overall well arranged melodies, compositions and build-ups of the tracks. Their music is the true essence of more progressive and dark PsyTrance, with overheated tempo, psychedelic sound perspective but nevertheless with Softcore-like themes which provide the near Oriental, Indian sound universe which is the case in the track “Sod”.
The themes on the EP “First Five + RadioMegaMix” have this dark and heavy atmosphere in the synthesizer sounds and the themes has many different variations that provides that Mental Zones music never sounds monotonous. Mental Zone always uses many connecting shifts that do not loose the thread of the particular track. That contributes that the listeners do not find the tracks boring, due to the length of the tracks, that often lasts for more than six minutes.
Mental Zones percussion often sounds non-electronic but is played very Techno/Electronic like which gives it a clear ExperiMENTAL touch. The percussion in the track "Nar” has often been compared with the fellow Danish band Safri Duo on their track “Played Alive” but “Nar” was already written a couple of years before Safri Duo had their worldwide breakthrough.
The Mental Zone bass sound varies between the common bass guitar-like played bass and the more PsyTranced played. On “Lim” the bass is almost nonexistent while it is merged with the fast playing Punk guitar-like riff. Mental Zone often uses those guitar-like riffs on their tracks.
The EP “First Five + RadioMegaMix” is produced and recorded more as a rock or pop record instead of the typical for the genre, homemade bedrooms studio recordings. All recordings and mixing were made at the
Medley Studio in Copenhagen, Denmark which is a well known and commonly used high quality studio for artists and producers worldwide. Mental Zone did the recording, producing and mixing themselves. Mental Zone has recorded this EP using only one instrument; a Roland D-20 Synthesizer. Believe it or not; no other instruments, samplers or other digital/electronic instruments were used at all and the majority of riffs and rhythms are played by hand. All this was done also to challenge their skills and to prove Mental Zones superiority as real musical artists (unlike many of the other acts in the genre using the latest gadgets and high-end equipment) and to prove that it is possible to produce great music with a single instrument. Imagine Mental Zone producing music with no strings attached!
Originally the Band started with a Roland E-10 keyboard, an Aria Pro II guitar and an Amiga500 computer with the floppy disc based sequencer software called Trax. Mental Zone was producing the legendary track “Hammond Rock” on that very equipment. In 1990 the Aria Pro II guitar was replaced by a couple of models from the Gibson owned Epiphone, a black Les Paul custom with dirty fingers pick up and a customized i-series in silver (originally Pearl White). In 1994 Mental Zone bought a used Roland D-20 and an old Atari with a floppy disc version of Cubase and that is that particular equipment used on the EP "First Five + RadioMegaMix.
Please enjoy this music from Mental Zones Promotion PsyTrance EP, and if possible you should play it very very loud. If your loudspeakers can not stand the sound pressure from this production you should have them replaced anyway. Be careful if you are using older loudspeakers with tender rims. Played loud they could break due to the low frequency and very tight sounds you find on some tracks on Mental Zones “First Five + RadioMegaMix”.