Published in the California Aggie

Issue date: 1/19/06

Section: Arts & Entertainment

by Branden Bussolini

Artist: Mandrake

Genre: folk-rock

If one were to judge by the production value of Oakland four-piece Mandrake's music alone, the phrase "sepia-tinged folk music" - used in a review of their 2005 album, Prelude, and quoted on the KDVS 90.3 FM website - would indeed be very appropriate for the band.

But in regard to the band's style, things are a bit more problematic than that.

The group, which will visit KDVS ' Live In Studio A tonight at 11:30 and consists of Liam Carey, Matt Herz, Jason Walker and Owen Williams, splits its time between instrumental pieces and songs with vocals. The vocals are mixed low enough in the tracks from Prelude, some of which are available via the band..'s website and its MySpace.com page, to approximate the voice-carried-on-the-wind effect of Nick Drake's singing.

It is in the instrumental tracks, however, that the band displays a musical heritage far closer to the Chicago school of "post-rock" neoprog - especially that of late-period Don Caballero - than to the Incredible String Band.

While the instruments used by Mandrake may be acoustic and the drumming less technical and propulsive than those of the bands listed above, the precise frenetic energy and calculated crescendos characteristic of this movement lay just beneath the warm, deliberate haze of the band's recordings.

It should be interesting to see, then, how the band will come across without this multitrack mediation.

A track titled "Mouse" provides us a hint of what to expect on LISA. The strangely technical drumming and conspicuously bright vocals spin out a sound that suggests the Black Heart Procession sharing a bill with Garrett Pierce at Delta of Venus.

It is important to note here that, despite our attempt to place Mandrake within a web of references, it is not so much a math-rock band parading as postmodern folk singers as they are an unexpectedly compelling and a steadfastly unclassifiable listen.