Now established as a working quartet compromising Mike Mayfield, Chris Sule, Alec Vance and Jim Yonkus, these tracks predate the full-time arrival of Mayfield and Sule. The background beats and ambiences that Vance and Yonkus had collected on old-fashioned tape machines have since been dusted off and overdubbed for this release. These expansive instrumentals are typified by Yonkus's surging, probing bass and the washes of synth both he and Vance favour. There's a cool detachment to the sitar tinged "Paysans De La Mer", and an epic rolling quality to the lithe "Europa". The disc closes with two lengthier, freer and more experimental tracks. A roiling chaos of sound finds form and focus through its course in "Pointu II", acting as an Ur-version of its earlier polished version. The shimmering, lush, synth wash of "10", named after one of Jupiter's moons, wears its wondrous space rock ambience on its sleeve.
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I don't wish to diminish this disc by simply tacking on a few significant reference points as if it were birthed by lesser beings (or a teenage garage band), but from the moment I started listening to it I kept thinking that it really should have been released by Strange Attractors Audio House. Unlike space flight dreamweapon contemporaries Landing and SubArachnoid Space however, Chef Menteur is essentially a duo. The core of the band is comprised of multi-instrumentalists Alec Vance & Jim Yonkus with a few other cats rounding out the sounds with post-improv synths and percussion (though it seems a solid line up is now in place). We Await… is an alluring collection of psych & space rock jams recorded over the period of two years cleaned and polished up for consumption. Given the relative uniformity and strength of the songs, there must have been a lot of tape to prowl through, coz there's very little filler within the album's 70+ minute run. So either these guys record everything and shake out the seeds and stems or they are musical geniuses or savants that hit the mark each time out. I hope there is more to come from these guys. But seeing that they and their label is based in New Orleans I'm guessing that a lot of gear is now gone. Here's to hoping that all is good and more NOLA psych will be blastin' out soon!!!- Chris Jacques
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Instrumental ambient/space-rock, experimental soundscapes. "Low-fi" in that its recorded in a home studio usinga roomful of various much loved sound sources, but it doesn’t scream out “low fi” really at all. Trippy heady stuff, most songs long, meandering. Pass the bong. For fans of Biota, Flying Saucer Attack, Bethany Curve, Bowery Electric, 7% Solution, American Analog Set, early Stereolab.

1) slow to develop space rock, upbeat, ambient prettiness and layers of trippiness, Flying Saucer Attack comes to mind,
2) slower more chill, early Stereolab comes to mind
3) a nice idea but meanders around a sparse melody and doesnt do anything
4) ambience
5) strummy piece
6) mix of electronics, some electro acoustics and found sound field records, rhythmic
7) mellow, loopy dark, cool
8) simple theme, melody, looped and echoed, low fi
9) very ambient, guitar based, almost Eno'esque for first 4-5 minutes then builds, develops more amplitude, density
10) lush soundscapes, multi-Instrumental, dramatic
11) trippy intro leads into simple mindful beat with organ, layers of noise and space, pretty cool if you don’t mind that it doesn’t really go anywhere (but must we always go “somewhere”?)
12) really beautiful lush orchestral drone, very long (17min), hypnotic, careful very long fade out, with a good 45-60 seconds of dead air at end (caution!)
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Email arrived this morning from another New Orleans act, the group Chef Menteur, named for a highway that leads east out of New Orleans. The email wasn't automated; it brought welcome news that the band's members were far from New Orleans themselves, beyond the reach of Hurricane Katrina, dispersed across the country.

I first saw Chef Menteur play when it was a duo, Jim Yonkus and Alec Vance, two gear-enabled noodlers making psychedelic noise. Chef Menteur has since expanded, and its first proper album, We Await Silent Tristero's Empire, arrived earlier this year on the Backporch Revolution label. Now a quintet, including Bryan Killingsworth, Chris Sule and Mike Mayfield, they still make studio-enabled psychedelia, but its richer, thicker and more self-assured, as evidenced for the downloading public by four full MP3s on the band's website, chefmenteur.org. There's Fourth World folk music, laced with sitar, on "Paysans de la Mer" (MP3), and a slowly grooving retro-campy vamp, "Pointu" (MP3), that suggests the ghost of Ernie K-Doe was nearby during its recording. The longest of the batch, "Europa" (MP3), escalates suddenly toward its end, capping the extended opaque ambience with voluminous dissonance, before a final fade. Perhaps the best track, "W.A.S.T.E." (MP3), maintains a slow, lo-fi beat and affixes to it all manner of sampled and performed material, hand claps, plucking, field recordings, yelps and more. Additional info at backporchrevolution.com. ... And now go visit the Red Cross, and help clean up after Katrina: redcross.org.
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