John Elliott:
“I think Chris Madak was born after impact in a car crash? and his Hyperborean Trenchtown will enter the world in a similar fashion. The album resonates a future sound vision that can only come from an old soul destined to further pave the paths laid by electronic and minimalist pioneers.
Thorough audio examinations covering every facet of sound/tone property as a whole will reveal astonishing new layers listen after listen. Undeniably pure processes of creating and sustaining sound visually? sonically and otherwise brings a mathematical and scientific accuracy that hasn’t been seen since the days of Lovely Music Ltd. or GRM. The album’s two side-long cuts are divided into two displays of versatility with varied sound sources including amplified acoustic instruments? hand-made electronics? phonography and more. Brilliant textures and audio hallucinogenic time/space wormholes create infinite listening possibilities for this album.
Few albums can create such a disorienting tunnel that it sounds as if the record has multiple albums locked within itself — you can hear these sounds and interpret them in so many ways that only time can unlock its many possibilities. Great albums only gain significance and this is surely no exception. Listen to this record on your turntable and stop time completely or melt into the past or the future with it — your choice.”
“Massive new LP from Chris Madak aka Beemask. Madak has had a bunch of cross-format releases to his name over the past few years but this feels like the first full blooming of his muse, an album that walks an uneasy line between static drone constructs, widescreen void-gobbling horror, psychedelic electro-acoustic composition and abstract sound art but that plays like the drug jag of your dreams. The first half consist of this massive ululating wormhole that flits between an implied ominous, world-devouring drone and a weirdly refracted/barely moving reverie of minimal metal clank and mutated single note string drone. If you can imagine the opening seconds of Popol Vuh’s live show circa Aguirre sustained for an entire side, or maybe a more hallucinogen-amplified take on John Clyde-Evans’ Fisheye LP or even Tangerine Dream’s planetary scale electronics on Zeit denuded of any specific spatial trajectory, then you’re halfway there. The flip starts off in a more Goblin/horror soundtrack way with spare clusters of percussive tone giving way to transportive spaceways synth that is as devotional and otherworldly as Lord Krishna Von Goloka, Tarot or any of the holy works of devotional German electronics. A fantastic side, edition of 400 copies, sold out at source.”
“april 2009 release ; first mass-market release from chris madak’s bee mask project …
one side with a continuous, warmly enveloping tone-cloud, another with shorter segments of field-recorded events & further stasis (listen to the sound-sample) & an oddly placed coda of aftertouch-heavy synth drippings …
comes in an eye-popping sleeve (seriously, chad has been kicking ass with weird forest vinyl in general) with a gold-metallic insert …”
Kristen Anderson’s Record-a-Day:
“Stunning solo work of American improv sound artist Chris Madak. This is Bee Mask’s 27th release to date.
Divine and otherworldly, “Hyperborean Trenchtown” is two tracks on two sides. One side is bells clanging under circling synth and looping tape, likely originating somewhere warm and sunny and beyond the north wind. The other side is densely layered, multi-dimensional, ominous, dark drone with plenty of extended and mounting tension.
The instrumentation is “handmade sensors and oscillators, cassette and 1/4″ tape loops, steinway model d piano, prepared telecaster, bells, singing bowl, frostwave resonator, and sequential circuits six-track synthesizer”. Whispered rumours in my office suggest Madak records the sounds of insects in jars, and the sounds on this record do sound somewhat organic and alive. But that’s just wives’ tales at work creating legend.
Madak appears on 35-40 different releases on the various formats other than MP3, playing with assorted cassette culture noise outfits including: Telecult Powers, The Reel Deal, Tusco Terror, DLX OTHR.
Witches, please note: screenprinted cover art graphics by Aaron Winters, inspired by ‘Artemsian/Dianic Cults, Ephesus, and their relationship to Ursa Major’.”
“Eerie, spooky and majestic sidelong drones.
Side A Sounds like hot steam coming out of giant metal pipes in the dungeon of some factory. Clinks and clanks in the background as if rats were dropping hammers. Under it all is a low frequency hummmm, wavering in and out…teasing at your ears like a fly to a light. Lots of industrial sounding layers.
Side B is more on the ethreal, lighter side. Rainbow twinkling comets and stardust filled dreams. Mermaids taunting you in underwater champagne bubbles. The wooden-metal windchimes add to the summer breeze feel of it. Very pretty!”
Andrew Murdock Livingston, for Junkmedia:
“Bee Mask is the performing name of Chris Madak, once a rising star in the Cleveland noisenik scene who moved to Philly a couple of years back. He plays drones using homemade photosensitive circuits controlled by small moving lights. On paper it sounds like some sort of squealfest; in reality Madak produces wide-open drones without a hint of rushing. There is an excellent amount of tone in these tracks, cello-type stretches and metal on metal banging hushed in the background (you can take the boy out of Cleveland…).
Tension arises and sounds like a swarm of tricky insects coming through the wires and injecting you with something narcotic. This is headspace music of the highest degree. Side two starts off with some bells, and synths come shooting in arcs like a rainbow, virtually going unchanged except for the ever-so-slight shift in pressure until halfway through. The New Age synth falls into the background and lets a jumpy set of loops take the wheel, but not for long; a pitch-shifting keyboard line runs the loops out of the speakers and delivers a flat, bagpipe-esque drone. That drone fades out to provide a background for a pretty set of chords played on a delayed-to-hell analog synth.
Side B is very diverse, but it’s almost too much of a contrast to Side A, which provides some great shifts in dynamic within its sixteen minutes. Side B doesn’t flow nearly as easily; although none of the movements are bad, they seem too out of step, not giving you a chance to let them wash over you before they’re gone.”
“Strange dude- plays rusty cans of amplified bee honey triggered by pulse width modulation in a nasty basement infront of a nasty crew but ends up sounding like a Hawaiian Slack Key Synth jammer from the Golden Gate Pathways to Tomorrow Feel Good branch office. Makes no sense. Raw EQ = Smooth Clean Sounds. Killer style. Tapes from this OH – Philly transplant ruled but this debut long jammer is wicked kool. Side one sounds like the P2 “Blunt” lp armwrestling with Tapeworm Miles’ “Growing Isolation” lp / but ends with both units sharing a strawberry frosted from the corner Dunkin Doughnuts. Side two: Has all sorts of strange moods, non-raw and ends with a tropical breezer warm wind blowing around just fine. I heard the loon from Jolly Rancher who came up with the flavor popcorn-watermelon engineered this lp for extra strangeness, might be wrong. Add a little confusion and west coast rain-soak and you got a perfect Palace of Lights record. Kept mine snug in the shrink to keep the totally ace screen job intact. Is the back a pick of the B’OAR?”
