M. Geddes Gengras

An experimental musician and synthesizer enthusiast based in Hudson, New York, M. Geddes Gengras has contributed to a broad spectrum of projects that encompass psych-folk, noise rock, dub reggae, and cosmic ambient drone. Demand for his input rose sharply in the latter half of the 2000s as he joined experimental outfits including Robedoor and Pocahaunted, though his first solo cassettes and CD-Rs of modular synthesizer improvisations did not appear until 2009. Working alongside close associate Sun Araw (Cameron Stallones), Gengras collaborated with the influential reggae group the Congos on the acclaimed 2012 album Icon Give Thank. Several ambitious long-form drone pieces have followed, among them the 2018 double-CD Light Pipe, while noisy experimental techno has surfaced both as Personable and under his own name, as heard on 2020’s Time Makes Nothing Happen; 2022’s Expressed, I Noticed Silence spotlighted his brother Cyrus Gengras, formerly his partner in the duo Antique Brothers.

Originally from New England, M. Geddes Gengras relocated to Los Angeles in 2005. Around that period he and his brother Cyrus launched the ethereal folk duo Antique Brothers, which issued multiple tapes and CD-Rs on imprints such as House of Alchemy and Foxglove, while he also issued solo material under the name Fantastic Ego via Phantom Limb Recordings. In 2007 the group Thousands—featuring Grant Capes and Tim Goodwillie of [VxPxC]—put out several limited recordings, one of them on Not Not Fun, inaugurating an extended relationship between Gengras and the label. He ultimately took part in several of Not Not Fun’s flagship acts, among them the stoner-noise group Robedoor, the tribal psych collective Pocahaunted, and the abstract dance project LA Vampires. Growing fixation on modular synthesizers prompted numerous releases of his own electronic experiments on labels including Stunned Records, Digitalis, and Tape Drift.

Gengras’s first solo LP, The Y-Δ Transform, surfaced on Abaddon Records in 2011. That same year he journeyed to Jamaica with frequent collaborator Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw). The pair established Duppy Gun Productions, a label and production unit devoted to futuristic dancehall reggae, and they also worked with reggae legends the Congos to create the album Icon Give Thank, issued by Rvng Intl. as part of its FRKWYS series. Released in 2012 together with a documentary of the sessions, the album earned widespread praise and was soon followed by the live EP Icon Give Life. Gengras persisted with solo synthesizer explorations on the Test Leads LP, issued by Holy Mountain/Intercoastal Artists, and he also released Spontaneous Generation, the debut LP from his techno project Personable, on the Peak Oil label.

In 2013 the Mexican label Umor Rex gathered selections from earlier cassettes onto the LP Collected Works, Vol. 1: The Moog Years. Shortly afterward came the debut double LP from Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group, which counted Gengras among its members alongside Stallones, Butchy Fuego (Lucky Dragons, Pit Er Pat), and Tony Lowe. His subsequent solo synth album, Ishi, appeared on Leaving Records in 2014, while a second Umor Rex LP, Collected Works Vol. 2: New Process Music, followed soon after. The second Personable full-length, New Lines, emerged on Peak Oil in 2015. The next year Intercoastal Artists released one of Gengras’s most ambitious efforts to date, the double LP Interior Architecture. Hawaiki Tapes, a set of improvisations captured during a vacation in Hawaii, was issued by Umor Rex in 2018 and was succeeded by Light Pipe, an expansive double CD of pieces composed for site-specific performances, released by Room40. Another lengthy, drone-based album, I Am the Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World, arrived on Hausu Mountain in 2019.

Gengras digitally self-released the abstract techno album Time Makes Nothing Happen in May 2020; six months later Hausu Mountain reissued it with an added track. The Encyclopedia of Civilizations, Vol. 4: Zoroaster, a collaboration with Psychic Reality, came out on Abstrakce Records in May 2022. Expressed, I Noticed Silence, an ambient/space rock album featuring Cyrus Gengras, appeared on Hausu Mountain the following July.