From the album "Tourrorists" (2006, Abduction)
(Features Erik Gergis on Organ and Drums)
Digital album available @ www.porest.bandcamp.com

Hoyda

From Porest: "Sedimental Gurney" EP (2020)

https://porest.bandcamp.com/album/sedimental-gurney

Back to Clay

From the album: Porest (1976-77). Available on Bandcamp: https://porest.bandcamp.com/album/porest-1976-77

In mid-2023, an unmarked, unhoused cassette tape was discovered amongst tapes retrieved from Porest's late grandfather's collection, revealing one of the earliest known Porest albums – recorded in Northern California by a 6 and 7 year old Mark Gergis and unheard since. 

Cassettes like these were recorded often at the Gergis household throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but very few survived the ages. Half of the cassette was recorded during a week-long stay at the grandparents' home, which housed a player piano in the basement. The tape was likely left behind accidentally and spared by a grandparent who shared an affinity for documentation but also had the foresight to know that it would sell for top dollar on Bandcamp in the distant future. 

Porest the boy entertains with rudimentary radio dramas, sound effects, pause-button edits and inserts from radio & TV of the time, original numbers and several spirited attempts at 20th century musical favorites, manually pumped on a player piano. It's basically the same Porest you have always known, but better, and worse.

Porest Machines (drama with musical accompaniment) 1977

From the Porest EP: Sedimental Gurney (2020)

Passport Pleas

From the Porest EP: Sedimental Gurney (2020). Available on Bandcamp.

Hamfist Disco Usa

From "Prude Juice For The Heritage Swinger" (SEELAND, 2003)

Mid-Stride Sensitive Poised

From the album "Tourrorists" (2006, Abduction)
Digital album available @ www.porest.bandcamp.com

We Eat The People

Previewing Track 6 of "Radio Vietnam" - Available from Sublime Frequencies.

Radio Vietnam - Hit Zones

Tourrorists!

Meat Supply

Composition Of Sheep

Recorded in Syria 1998 & Oakland 1999
Released on Porest album "Mood Noose" (Resipiscent, 2005) (RSPT006)

Drain The Swamp

From the 2002 7" split EP with Aavikko
"Mono Pause / Aavikko ‎– El Cebo / Of Stomping Men"
(Seeland ‎– SEELAND 125/Electro Motive Records ‎– CPA-020)

Mono Pause - El Cebo

From the 2012 LP "2" on Abduction Records (ABDT047)

NEUNG PHAK – Sad Chatri

From the album "Tourrorists!" (Abduction, 2006)
Digital album available @ www.porest.bandcamp.com

Let's Roll

Featuring: Peter Conheim
From the album "Modern Journal of Popular Savagery" – 2016, Nashazphone (LP, cassette) Digital album available @ www.porest.bandcamp.com

Passport Please

Argentine project POROTO MUNG (German & friends ((of Los Siquicos Litoraleños)) – spinning wider the web of Porest's "Hoyda" in perpetual homage to little gods of Kashkevar.

Poroto Mung - Hodydaa (Hoyda)

Hey, some of my best friends are field recordists!

- From Porest's "Modern Journal of Popular Savagery" LP (Nashazphone)

Modern Journal of Popular Savagery

The Field Recording

Seeded Subterfuge

Mono Pause - Police State

A commanding instructional piece from the Porest vaults.

MG / Peter Conheim
1992 - porestsound

Across decades, Porest (aka Mark Gergis) has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas and carefully rearranged realities. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), and Aavikko (Finland), among others.

 Porest’s Modern Journal of Popular Savagery LP was released by Nashazphone (Cairo) in 2016, followed by an appearance at TUSK festival (UK) and a European tour. In 2017, Porest’s Optimized! – The Parallel Broadcasts was issued as a split LP alongside London’s People Like Us on the Discrepant label (UK), followed by performances in Cairo, and at the Beirut and Beyond festival in Lebanon (curated by Egypt’s Maurice Louca). 2017’s album Flimsy Tomb was released by Sucata Tapes (UK) on cassette, celebrated with a performance at Café OTO, London. Past releases can be found on the Seeland, Resipiscent and Abduction labels. 

 London-based Mark Gergis was born in California, where he begat the Porest project. Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental Bay Area music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its offshoot Neung Phak; performing inspired renditions of southeast Asian folk and pop music. Since 2003, with the Sublime Frequencies label, and more recently, with his own record label Sham Palace, Mark has shared decades of research and scores of archived international music, film footage and sound recordings acquired during extensive travels in the Middle East and South East Asia. 

•

I have no fuckin' idea how to describe this monster...how about brazen, sample-driven, manic, pissed-off, over-the-top, brilliant?  – BLASTITUDE

Porest creates subversively comedic and extremely leftist audio collages on as current and confrontational a tip as creatively possible. …Venomous…uninhibitedly outspoken sound-bite masterpieces. Porest lodges a well-aimed spit-wad into the eye of capitalist America. You can’t argue with the truth.  – Kevin Hainey, EXCLAIM!

All I know is the way Mark Gergis cuts and pastes signifiers of our global predicament into songs that are funny, baffling, catchy, reverent, subversive, absurd, and logical is a knack that has a few parallels (Negativland, Eugene Chadbourne, Gergis’ brethren Sun City GIrls) but no real peers. …The Porest POV is so intact it’s blinding – and I’ll be staring at this sun for a while.  – Marc Masters, 200 WORDS

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