2.09.2008
L. A. Mantra
![](http://207.228.243.82/crud/lamantra.jpg)
Various L.A. Mantra cassette (Trance Port, 1983)
Though described in several online entries as the first of Trance Port's trance cassettes, this pup is less a trance release and more of an overview of Los Angeles' non-punk music underground. The only artist on L.A. Mantra that is even close to being a household name (but only if you live in a very hep house) is Savage Republic. Music freaks might recognize the name of Savage Republic side project The Tunneltones, the John & Dix Denney (of the Weirdos) experimental venture If-Then-Else, or A Produce, the founder of Trance Port, member of Afterimage, and a pioneer in the L.A. trance music scene. And then there are true obscurities such as Rich Evac (of Afterimage and Psi Com), Fat & Fucked Up, and Debt of Nature.
You've read enough of my babbling on the cassette underground. I am sure you know that something exciting was happening in the Los Angeles underground from 1975 to about the time this cassette was released. And I am too fucked for time and energy to search out more information on the artists represented on this cassette. I will, however, leave you with a handful of songs.
Debt of Nature were an early Brad Laner (Savage Republic, Medicine, more recently has played with Eno, & Yoko Ono) band and posted tons of their old recordings over at Mutant Sounds.
lawns, monitor, nervous gender. and the less obvious: fibbonacis, bob and bob/ all great l.a bands on the wierd side of things. i always come back to fibbonacis's slow beautifull sex and terrorvision soundtrack.
thanks a lot for the post.
Eilon
Also, I had a "solo" career of my own trance-bound recordings. Trance Port was reformed in 1992, as a CD label, and I have issued my and others recordings at CDBaby.com, hypnos.com/aproduce or at the IPR record store on eBay.
In addition to my own recordings on Trance Port CD's, I also launched a series of releases starting in 2003 as Trance Port
Special Editions. One was entitle "Maybe Forgotten Forever", a double CD of Ruben Garcia's as well as the definitive compilation of the lost band, Afterimage, of which I was a part of and started in the early 80's.
Savage Republic played with Afterimage on a few occasions, even right before they made their classic album "Tragic Figures"; in fact, we played with them as Africa Corp. before they became Savage Republic.
There are many sources on the Web that information can be culled regarding this significant time in what the L.A. experimental scene was like in the early 80's.
djmojo2000@yahoo.com
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