Our first compilation CD, released in 2001, showcases the most powerful and advanced musickal shamans from around the planet. The collected bands work on many different levels and bring a variety of sounds and styles, from the fuzz monolith of ROBOT VS. RABBIT to the polyrhythmic voodoo of CIRCLE, the space rock assault of ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. to the Holy Mountain of REYNOLS, the guitar magic of MANDOG to the digital alchemy of PARADISE CAMP 23. Now a historical first document of free/psych/noise, the "No New York" of psychedelic noise, featuring exclusive tracks by several legendary and now defunct underground superstars.

Way beyond acid rock or the avant-garde, these bands employ every tool and instrument to smash thru the gates of reality, conjuring feedback demons, weaving sonic spells, and invoking the primal chao Divine. The perfect soundtrack to your next black mass, datura trip or freakout party. Destined to be a classic and essential collection of extreme entheogenic exotica.

Crucial Blast.com - 3/4/06
http://www.crucialblast.net/webstore/comps.html
"This compilation from 2001 features a cross-section of some of the heavy psych-noise-rock underground's best, and charts several streams in the damaged space rock / free noise paniverse. There's some crushing freeform amp-death-drone from Robot Vs. Rabbit that combines Total, Earth, Sunn O))), and Skullflower into a single chainsaw mantra that'll kill planets... Pink Floyd meets Circle hypno-rock sorcery of Japan's Mandog... some gloriously wasted Boredoms -on-acid jamming from Acid Mother's Temple, who unleash a nicely fucked Cotton Casino-led cosmic freakout...Primordial Mind's waves of anti-gravitational amplifier hate...drugged space-prog splatter from Interferents... Escapade offers up waves of howling synth noise backed by thunderous drum rolls on the Krautrock / psyche dream "It Gets Banished Forever", and the mighty Reynols gives us another slice of their surrealist shamanic splatter prayer, like a Catholic high mass taking place on the set of Conan The Barbarian. Finnish trance rock heavies Circle delivers more spacious ambient journeys with "Harmaat", while Pine Tree State Mind Control's proto-industrial drone chug exhumes the corpse of early Chrome and rattles walls. Theres lots more too, a killer heavy comp that could well be the equivalent of No New York for the modern heavy cosmic-gunk-rock underground."

Sound Projector #13 (2005)
http://www.thesoundprojector.com/
"Kidney-bitingly good comp from the marvellous Mandragora Records,. Acquire it and recoil to encounter twelve varieties of undead, each different in form but unified in their fervent desire to drag you down to their level and snigger while God damns you repeatedly for having such good taste. Did you remember to wash your sexual parts in a virgin's tears? Have you abstained from antheomorphopansophophoby? Then tightly grip your angel and let us proceed...

Surely there's no one on earth who doesn't dream of the psychedelic underground? Willing the bastard thing to exist? Like you or someone you know, I was once brain raped by Blue Cheer as I pigged out on Throbbing Gristle, and I felt a dark fusion transpire inside of me; the idea that psychedelia could be noise and noise could be psychedelia (instead of just noise) took form and fed on my blood, until I grew fat with it; spurred on by screaming Japanese midwives, my disbelieving flaps dilated and I pushed hard like a good girl. But nothing emerged: the yearned-for progeny refused to incarnate. Until now? Weeeeell... yes and no. Despite its high enjoyment factor, there's still something not quite ready, not quite full-term about this sinister collection of drone-metal and apres-Kraut chic. Every track's at least quite good, a few are truly top-hole, but the central thesis remains underdeveloped, and too often I feel one can perceive the hastily-stitched joins between, say, 'rock' music and its darker collary (for which 'psychedelic noise' must suffice as a name - although in truth it has no name). I mean, I'm being picky. If you like hopelessly stoned-out heavy dirge sans tunes (as I do), you're in for a treat! There are lots here. Some will hit you from many directions at once, crumpling your fussy genre-distinctions into a bloody ball in a bona fide psychedelic-noise embolism. Others talk the talk but don't quite walk the walk. These remain of minor interest to all but the most fuzz-starved energy beggar, so tracks by Mandog, Escapade, Paradise Camp 23, At The Eat and Delayed Sleep - all of you - shit off back to Nowheresville and do steroids.

As for the rest, it's full-on my-dead's-deader-than-your-dead deadness.'AHHHHHHUUUWA-OO-WAA-OO-WAAAHHHONGGGGG' goes Robot vs. Rabbit's epochal"Not Shiny", the sonic equivalent of a policeman's truncheon smashing over yr skull, breaking it into pieces and liberating the exact same cloud of half dead butterflies released over Hyde Park by the Rolling Stones in 1969. Then there's "Rosewood Frog with Serbian Eye" by Interferents, some sort of "band" from Brooklyn (don't think I mentioned, it's a pan-global line up on this CD - acts from USA, Japan, Finland and Argentina) cooking up an atonal, spastic stumble through foggy migraines so completely bereft of hope as to dissuade Jesus from his resurrection. Disco! No sooner have you fought off this shambler than cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! It's thirteen past forever and time for Pine Tree State Mind Control to lurk outside your school and sell you drugs, which you consume obediently only to fly home and find both parents have turned into witches. Strong stuff, huh? Glad you stuck around? Yeah, me too, just a shame the other-ness level can't be maintained for the duration of the trip - some tracks dip the intensity level several notches and my rational mind comes clanking in like Dad's rubbish android. No such qualms with Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO or Reynols, however, whose back to back assault with (respectively) "Spaced Out" and "Un Tiermo Exsina Concinado Cahubo de lo Pasno Y Ronil Fermo Acarriones Nindio los Minecxio Alcalpulco Moros" is about where this journey peaks. The former a patented kitchen-sink style slice of fucked up Hawkwind with added everythiing, the latter seemingly a soundtrack to the inner life of zombies (featureless zones of endless grey; shuffling rhythym, animal moaning), between them they're squeezing the life out of me. You could do worse than to buy this thing if only to check out my putrefying corpse sandwiched between tracks 7 and 8."
-Jonathan Hellier

Dream Magazine #4 (2004)
http://www.dreamgeo.com/
"North Carolina's Robot vs. Rabbit do some shredded howl with scrapings and angelic overtones. Japan's MANDOG deliver a delicate extraterrestrial fingerling of shimmering spacious radiation and internal moaning. Interferents from Brooklyn, NY do some tweaked cat meowing vocals over bass heavy mud puddle mood music. Pine Tree State Mind Control out of Maine, ooze slow fuzzily distorted ghost visions. NYC band Escapade do a fairly subtle eight minute rumination on slowly simmering tensions and resolutions. Paradise Camp 23 from Massachusetts slither in on whispering hiss, and slowly release tiny musical insects and animals that infest your mind and stereo. Japan's revered Acid Mothers Temple and Melting Paraiso U.F.O. do a short (almost 5 minutes) piece with Cotton Casino whooping, swooping and yelping while a space age garage band tries to whip some space monkeys into submission before it surrenders to the angels. Argentina's Reynols sound lost and spaced out for ten and a half hypnotic minutes while phantom songs layer in echo as singer/ drummer Miguel Tomasin vocally meanders in mysterious magical chanting communion. Texan loonies Primordial Undermind deliver a nearly ten minute report on intergalactic weather, or the migration of geese, I can't decide. At The Eat of Groton, Massachusetts next do a relatively melodic induction of disembodied spirits into an organ grinder's dub mix of hallucinations. Sacramento's own Delayed Sleep sound like the maid outside my room at 6:AM cleaning the hall carpet with a small jet engine and a drum kit while I'm nursing a peyote hangover. Finally Finland's Circle end things on an energetic note with some smoking active interaction that sure sounds alive if not live."- reviewed by George Parsons

Ptolemaic Terrascope Issue 33 Spring 2003
Rumbles (pg20)
Terracope website
"Mandragora Records have been bringing experimental folk and psychedelic music to us for a while now. Their CD compilation, 'Tryptaphonic Mind Explosion', should need little reccomendation from me to Terrascope regulars - I simply have to give you an edited track listing as almost every artist is Terrascopic to the hilt including Acid Mothers Temple, Circle, Reynols and Primordial Undermind"

NYPress Vol.16, Iss. 17 4/23/2003
http://www.nypress.com/16/17/music/music4.cfm
NOBODY SEEMS to appreciate compilation albums anymore. In an age of soundbites, digital downloads and quick-fix hits, hardly anyone puts much effort into assembling them. At best, various-artist anthologies are schizophrenic and inconsistent; at their worst, they amass uninspired, cutting-room flotsam into tossed-off, marginal hodgepodges aimed at anal-retentive trainspotters. And so, for every ancient milestone like Nuggets, Flex Your Head or No New York, the used bins overflow with dozens of crappy live collections and obvious tributes to limp, not-so-classic rockers.
The oft-neglected point of a sampler is to economically expose an audience to first-rate acts that complement one another like favorites on a well-paced mix tape. A few familiar names should help attract listeners to the more obscure participants while a cohesive, logical theme, genre or scene should tie everything together. It’s a simple idea, really...
Tryptaphonic Mind Explosion attempts to open "audio portals to hyperdimensional soundspace." Nodding to Altamont-style ugliness far more than it evokes the Summer of Love, its neo-psychedelic sprawl almost fulfills such lofty ambitions. AMT once again revel in their bamboo-commune shtick; North Carolina’s Robot Vs. Rabbit announce themselves with several bracing minutes of chainsaw blare; New Escapade glide by on soothing, hissing post-apocalyptic dust clouds; and Massachusetts’ At The Eat stagger like reformed hippies wizened by decades of dope withdrawal and punk. Even the disappointments don’t detract much from this way-out head trip...
Two decades from now, nobody will cite Painted Black, Tryptaphonic Mind Explosion or Klangbad: First Steps as incomparable works of genius. Yet all three remain minor miracles despite their flaws–given the self-conscious, lackluster state of both mainstream and independent entertainment, it’s a real pleasure to discover such smartly sequenced, lovingly constructed thrill rides through the international, experimental underground. Here’s to digging deep within those truly overlooked nooks." - Jordan N. Mamone

The Wire Issue 227 January 2003
The Compiler (pg70) Various Artists: reviewed, rated reviled
The Wire website
"...Only it doesnąt end there for AMT, whose music clamps them to the merry-go-round of eternal returns. Between Kawabata's beaming enthusiasm, bottomless well of energy and all the time in the universe to play in, AMT appear ever ready to oblige curatorial requests, contributing a track apiece to Typtaphonic Mind Explosion and Hand/Eye, each effortlessly keying into the retrospective compilation's tone. To the former, subtitled "Sounds From The Psychedelic Underground,"they offer up the Cotton Casino led "Spaced Out", whose gentle cosmic whispers provide a welcome refuge from the buffeting black hole clusters of guitar reverb and machine feedback characterizing the mostly American soul-pulverising tracks by Robot Vs Rabbit and Primordial Undermind. Beyond the black hole's gravitational tug, the logging crew Paradise Camp 23 bring garage punk's buzzsaw noise to the forest; and Argentine group Reynol's piece is as gorgeous as a Catholic high mass performed on the set Conan The Barbarian by the cast of She. Finally, however, Finnish troupe Circle lock the disc back into its recurring cycle with their densely layered and looped guitars..."

Vital Weekly Newsletter number 365 week 4
Vital Weekly website
"Massachussetts based label Mandragora Records has since its birth in 2001 specialized in psychedelic noise and other edgy kinds of experimental music. Tryptophonic Mind Explosion being the first compilation on the label presents twelve more or less unknown artists of the psychedelic underground. Quite a few of the contributions seem retrospective with some influence from the psychedelic scene of the late 60's and 70's thanks to the frequent occurrences of space rocking guitar distortions and the busy use of organs. The psychedelic style of the compilation reminds a little of the "Succour: The terrascope benefit album"-compilation from 1995, though the expression on Tryptophonic Mind Explosion is noisier and more drone-based stylishly pointing towards ambient where the Succour-compilation had a more emotional and dark expression. There certainly are many great tracks on the album. Highlights come from Acid Mothers Temple and their over the top guitar collaboration-freak out with Melting Praise U.F.O. as it sounds on "Spaced out" and the retro-psychedelic "Rosewood frog with Serbian eye" from Interferents sounding like oldest Pink Floyd with some truly bizarre subtle vocals and progressive drum patterns. Also worth mentioning is the long spooky "Harmaat"-track by Circle built on minimal soundscapes of droning noises and guitar distortions as well as the trippy sounds of psychedelic organs, spacey guitars and echoed vocals on the album's most melodic track, "Cornered" by At The Eat. Generally the musical quality is very high on this rather unusual compilation recommended to everyone searching for something quite different in the field of noise music." (NMP)

The Broken Face - Issue #15
The Broken Face website
"If you're looking for a compilation that charts some damaged space rock and noise terrain, then look no further. Boston's Mandragora records specializes in all manner of "pure psychedelic noise," and Tryptaphonic Mind Explosion is a groovy little comp that features an interesting cross of today's more sun-fried aural dementoids. The tracks range from the utterly destroyed wall of drone of Robot vs. Rabbit's "Not Shiny" to the most wasted free-for-all jamming of Acid Mothers Temple and the slightly more controlled space-prog/jazz splatter of Interferents. Escapade offers up waves of howling synth noise backed by thunderous drum rolls on "It Gets Banished Forever", and the mighty Reynols gives us another slice of their surrealist ambient splatter and art-rock ramblings. The great Circle delivers more spacious ambient journeys with "Harmaat" while other folks with names like Delayed Sleep, Pine Tree State Mind Control, and Paradise Camp 23 offer up their own brand of uncompromising garage noise. Add to that tracks by the Primordial Undermind, MAN-DOG and At The Eat, you've got yourself a ready-made intro into the world of transcendental weirdness." - Lee Jackson

Splendid E-zine 01/08/03
http://www.splendidezine.com/review.html?reviewid=3248870821329233
This collection of 12 improvisational tracks tests the boundaries between noise and music, using feedback, electronic tools and conventional instruments to create dense, multilayered architectures of sound. It comes from Mandragora Records, a Northampton, MA-based label specializing in psychedelic experimentation; label head Erik Amlee's band Paradise Camp 23 contributes the meditatively noisy "Something's Happening". The comp draws participation from four continents, including big names in the genre like Acid Mothers Temple, Circle and MANDOG.
Robot Vs. Rabbit, from North Carolina, kick things off with four minutes of feedback fuzz. Their contribution, "Not Shiny", sounds at first as if you are standing on the runway at O'Hare the day before Thanksgiving, a rush of noise that takes its time to resolve into shimmering layers. Yet inside the deafening drone, a fascinating interplay between tone and overtone emerges. The wax and wane of sound, the melodic ideas that tease but remain out of reach, are all buried in a thick slab of noise.
The biggest name on the disc is Acid Mothers Temple and Melting Paraiso U.F.O., whose "Spaced Out" merges killer guitar and bass with burbling high voices. Where many of the tracks lull you into dreams, this one has a caffeinated kick. Though sped up and digitally manipulated, "Spaced Out" takes you on a careening ride that is almost a conventional song, yet is not. It ends in a haze of angelic voices and a heartbeat, pounding hard -- and yours may be, too, by the finish.
Other highlights include the Argentinian trio Reynols's "Un Tiermo Exsina Concinado Cahuba De Lo Panso Y Ronil Fermo Acarriones Nindio Lo Minexcio Alcalpulco Moros", whose slacked-out rhythms and drifting, echoing vocals transport the listener to another dimension. This is another long track, but far from detracting, its ten-minute duration is barely enough time for the semi-religious experience it encourages.
A track by MANDOG, whose Keiichi Miyashita has played guitar with Can's Damo Suzuki, is equally powerful, its spiralling guitar lines forming an impenetrable haze of melody and meaning against wandering bass and insistent drums. Finland's Circle closes out the disc with a deafening wave of funky drone, repeated guitar and drum lines providing a foundation for arabesques of improvisation.
I found that the key to enjoying this album was finding the right volume. Set it too low and you miss the complexity inside the noise. Put it too high, and you end up like Pete Townsend. Get it just right and the liner notes, promising not just music or noise but "audio portals to hyperdimensional soundspace", start to make sense." -- Jennifer Kelly

StonerRock.com 12/27/02
http://www.stonerrock.com
"Talk about over the top in weird, strange or different, however you want to put it. The Tryptaphonic Mind Explosion is a collection of songs from bands around the world displaying their own version of art rock, whether it be noise, electronic, drone...it's in there somewhere with the best of them.
The first song on the CD is by a band that I am somewhat familiar with...Robot Vs. Rabbit who unleash their own brand of different with a track called 'Not Shiny'...it's a drone noise piece that will split your head in two. It's fuzzy and warm and gives Sunn a run for the drone money.
MANDOG from Japan are up next with a song called #0215 that sounds like a cross between Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell guitar effects and some purple blotter...it structured and has crazy leads all the way through it...almost jazzy feel to it with a twist of Syd Barrett.
Reynols from Buenos Aires Aregentina have an almost eerie sounding chant and almost windy sounds in the background...this song would make killer background music for 'Begotten'...for those who know what that is.
There is a ton more than what I can offer you in one reviews worth of descriptions. If you are into psychedelic music of all types then this is the compilation for you...it features lots of bands from all over the world and is definitely worth a spin for something completely different and fresh. It's a different take on music and explores more than the run of the mill Kyuss, Fu clones...check it out." - Rob Wrong

The Brainwashed Brain V05I48 (12/15/02)
http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/brainv05i48.html
"We are living in a golden age for mind-expanding, foundation-rumbling psych chaos, as evidenced by this particular slice of aluminum. In spite of coming from all corners of the globe, all 12 participants here have obviously been huffing the same UFO vapors. Robot vs. Rabbit lumbers through a buzzing, Earth-like dirge. In perhaps the weirdest piece on the disc, Interferents wring out some insane toy vocals over a hallucinatory jam. Pine Tree State Mind Control exhume the corpse of early Chrome and turn it into a conveyer belt. Escapade's loose, sprawling improv whips up a fresh black hole. Sure to make this comp a bestseller, the ubiquitous Acid Mothers Temple crash land the mother ship into heavy metal histrionics. Reynols' shamanic drone prayer makes early Amon Duul seem coherent and tight (that's a compliment, by the way). Finnish band Circle finish things off by returning us to more familiar krautrockish territories, somewhat reminiscent of the live Can stuff released a few years back. What makes this comp so great is the heavy layer of outer space that all of this music travels through before it reaches your ears. No duds to be found here. This music is unhitched, but not at all inept. They know where they are taking you. Like the liner notes say: 'The path of pure psychedelic noise awaits you.' " - Jesse Niemenen

Dead Angel #54 (11/02)
http://www.monotremata.com/dead/issues/da54.html
"More divine horribleness (and we mean that in the nicest way) from the freaks at Mandragora. First up, a bold move: Robot vs. Rabbit's stupefying uberdrone of pure crippling thunder, "Not Shiny," like the world's largest Sunn amp exploding in oscillating waves. Anybody who's truly unprepared will have fled the building before it even ends, and those who survive (and can still hear) will find the rest of the compilation soothing by comparison. Of the remaining eleven contributors to this collection (with one song apiece), some names are familiar (Acid Mothers Temple, Reynols, Primordial Undermind), others less so (Pine Tree State Mind Control, Delayed Sleep, etc.). Japan's Mandog contributes "#0215," a relatively interesting, often pulsing hallucination of repetition and droning guitars, and Escapade's "It Gets Banished Forever" recalls the darker and more droning moments of early 70s Krautrock psych. Not surprisingly, the most tripped-out and over-the-top track is the "Spaced Out," in which the Acid Mothers Temple does the unhorthodox Boredoms-on-acid freakout thing they do so well. The Reynols track (a bunch o' words i can't read since they're in Spanish) is the complete opposite, though -- plodding, minimalist drone and doomed, wailing vox. The Primordial Undermind's "Evestrum" is filled with all sorts of interesting drones and not a whole hell of a lot else outside of incidental music and tapes. Many of the participants here reference or hearken back to the earliest wave of industrial music, where formless 'n beatless started giving way to industrial sounds welded to a mechanized groove -- in this particular context we'd be looking at "Building My Own Nova Dreamer" (Delayed Sleep), the Interferents track "Rosewood Frog With Serbian Eye," and others by Pine Tree State Mind Control, Paradise Camp 23, etc. Given this many takes on an admittedly amorphous concept anyway (what defines psych, anyway?), it's not guaranteed all tracks will meet with approval, but they're all well-done and worth hearing. Plus you really do need it just for the Robot vs. Rabbit track alone, remember? There you go...."

Hellride Music 11/1/02
http://www.hellridemusic.com/bands/t/tryptaphonic_review.shtml
"I gotta tell you that I love this thing because it's not Slayer, Sabbath or Fu Manchu or some derivative of the former. Nothing wrong with those, but even Old Man Barnes needs a new bone to chew on now and again.. I don't know what it is exactly. I mean it's a collection of ambient space drone, noise, experimental, free jazz and acid core, but it's hard to get the head wrapped around a cohesive label. I guess the record company description of "Sounds from the Psychedelic Noise Underground" works best in this situation.
Bands immediately recognizable on this comp (meaning I didn't have to look at the line-up on the back of the CD) are drone/noise artists Robot vs Rabbit and the world's greatest band, spacekraut heavymetalnoisecore frequency explorers Circle, who stick out because of that patented drum sound. But there are some other great finds on here, such as the haunting cosmic ambiance of New York's Escapade, the minimalist noisescapes of Paradise Camp 23 (whose Erik Amlee put this amazing comp together), the shaman-on-psilocybian chants of Argentina's Reynols, or the free-form experimentalism of Interferents, again from New York. All diverse talents woven together with the thread of mind expansion and musical exploration.
A worthy purchase for the intrepid, the curious, the music lover and the head case. Very cool. Kudos to Mandragora Records (who specialize in this type of mind rock) for putting this together." - Chris Barnes