Daniel Menche (born 1969) is an iconic experimental musician and multidisciplinary artist from Portland, Oregon. Menche's sonic abstractions manifest through intense noise, immersive drones, dense ambiance, poly-rhythmic percussion, turbulent nature field recordings, abused acoustic instruments and many other sources. His music is adventurous in execution as well as presentation, creating an absolute, abstract sonic world.
Marked with a restless enthusiasm and preternatural expressionism, Menche's compositions typically arrange themselves through organic, seemingly subconscious systems of logic. Menche eschews narrative based chronologies in favor of perpetually active stratification of noise and drone. The immediate detail of his work can be tangles of overblown electrical chunks of chainsaw dissonance as easily as a calming and elegant ocean of sound. His compositions reveal the stately grandeur of an astute minimalism amplified. Both intense and serene pieces offer a wide spectrum of emotion. At times, a Menche composition can be a cathartic experience of obliterated sonic particles; at others, a heavy mantle can descend upon his rough tones to offer a darkly immersive introspection.
Many of his quieter pieces of music have been described as "extreme" to discerning ears, while his loudest and noisiest work has been described as finely crafted and thought provoking in nature. Never to be pigeonholed and always difficult to categorize, Daniel Menche's music is a relentless dichotomy of extreme musical emotions. In the truest nature of abstract art, Menche's music demands the surrender of "thinking" while the noise and sound is intensely presented to make way for a pure emotional experience. "Where language ends, music begins" is the mantra that best describes Menche's artistic stance.
Since 2010, Daniel Menche has also created abstract video art for his own music, displayed online, at site specific locations, and during live performances. Utilizing his stark black and white nature photography, Menche animates a dense mass of imagery as a complementary visual marriage to his music.
Menche's lengthy discography contains over 60 albums, many of which have been published by some of the most esteemed experimental record labels. Over the years he has worked with
Editions Mego, Sige,
Touch Music, Alien8 Records, Ash International, Utrecht Records, and many others. He has collaborated with Mamiffer,
Andrew Liles, KK Null, John Wiese, Aaron Bradford Turner, Joe Preston, Anla Courtis,
Zbigniew Karkowski, Kiyoshi Mizutani, and
Kevin Drumm. He has performed extensively in North America, Japan, Europe, and Australia.
