Since those earliest Mego records were they messed around with refrigerator sounds I’ve been spending a lot of time with my head next to the side of my fridge. That metallic humming sound is unstoppable — a deep gurgling drone I’ve always looked for in the best of Pan sonic, Hafler Trio, Stilluppsteypa and whoever else manages to get a similar sound on tape. Well I can stop searching now. This is it. This is the “drone” I’ve been looking for all my life. Mantra goes beyond Mego’s fridge sounds — forget the refrigerator, Laporte kicks it up several notches by going after the sound of a cooling compressor at a whole goddamned hockey rink. Twenty-two minutes of gorgeous oscillating, stuttering, burping noise that, through it’s simplicity, opens up a limitless world of mind-expanding possibilities. After reaching a peak early on in its duration and staying there for almost twenty minutes, the piece is topped off by an insane metallic rattling that brings it all home with a resonating hum as the machinery is shut down to silence. As soon as it is over I play it again. And again.
