Introduction

Mastock was a zine about experimental music which was active from 1999 to 2003. I ended the Mastock adventure for various reasons: lack of time, lack of passion, lack of money (doing a zine is expensive; mail costs are murder), and lack of energy. I felt that doing a zine was taking to much of my time. I wanted to spend my spare time recording my noise and music solo projects. I also wanted to do collaborations with other artists, which I did. Here`s a small list of those collabs:

1- Leper Collective released two albums. LC was a noise duo comprised of Maim Paterson (Bodybags zine) and myself.

2- G&F released three albums. G&F was an almost musical project. Our three albums are very different in feelings and styles.

3- Tectonic Plates has one unreleased album. TP is a sound duo with Alex Wheill and myself. The music is a mixture of various field recordings, found sounds and minimal / ambient moments.

4- Recyclor the first album isn`t finished yet. Recyclor`s music is hard to describe (Alex Wheill and myself). You could say it`s noisy techno with some funky elements thrown in, mixed with loud processed beats. It`s never easy working on Recyclor material, speaking for myself exclusively.

5- Psionic Flesh has one album out, we are currently recording new material. PF is a noise band featuring Jason Rodgers (Psionic Plastic Joy zine) and myself.

I also record solo material. I have two different solo projects:

1- Flesh For Frank, this is experimental noise. Don`t expect music here, that`s for sure.

2- Minimal Frank, more musical than noise. This is where I actually try to do music. What does it sound like ? It`s a mixture of various styles, ambient, ambient darkwave , sometimes lightly techno oriented, sometimes spacey and minimal. It all depends how I feel when I`m recording this stuff. Definitely not commercial enough i.e. you won`t hear this on commercial radio indeed.  

A couple of months ago I got a small parcel from Thompson (noiser and amazing collageist), a long time Mastock collaborator. He gave me a good old analog cassette (yes they`re still around) of great homemade noise. I was hooked. I felt like doing Mastock again but I didn`t want to spend all my spare time working on it. I don`t have the money to pay those highly expensive shipping fees. But I can print a couple of copies, not the usual 160 copies print run. So, what was I gonna do ?

The next step in evolution: going digital.

So, here it is the Mastock blog. I will talk about absolutely anything I feel like. There will be some reviews of various stuff I bought, that some cool folks gave me, traded, downloaded, etc, etc. There could be opinions, ideas, weird writings, poetry, some drawings, who knows.

Getting a hold of me.

You can contact me via email at: frank.zen@vif.com

Feel free to send me stuff for review purposes but don`t send me your material via my email, it doesn`t support big files. Send me a link via mediafire, rapidshare or any other type of file transferring website.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: I do everything by myself. So if you send me a shitload of stuff, don`t expect me to review all this stuff tomorrow. I work full time, I have a life, I have various interests outside of Mastock.

This is what I`m into, which makes me tick.

My kind of music, this is what I like (in no particular order):

Noise

Weird homemade recordings

Ambient noise

Ambient darkwave

Electroacoustic

Illbient

Minimal

Experimental

Chill-out

Techno

Trance

Goa

Soundtrack oriented

Lo-fi

Blues

Electronic

Synthpop

Lounge

Dub

Ambient

Field recordings

Cinematic

Some spoken word

Not my kind of music (in no particular order):

8 bit material

classic

western

country

heavy metal (all styles)

rock

punk

pop

grunge

rap / hip hop

jazz

dance

disco

traditional

gothic

ska

some spoken word

Thank you very much, enjoy the blog.

François Marceau