The debut Porest album, originally issued as a joint release on Compact Disc by the Seeland (Negativland) and Electro-Motive/Qualipy labels.

Porest presents a collection of carefully-arranged sound weavings, cut-ups, music and field recordings, exploitative pop tunes, loopy supernatural suites and imaginary radio dramas. "Prude Juice for the Heritage Swinger" blurs the sonic truths and lies about sheep, paranormal misogyny, Gamelan-soaked war veterans, our Nazi heritage, law, order and diseases of the American underbelly. Alternately hilarious and meditative, and totally "original".


Press:


THE WIRE Issue 24:
This kaleidescope of plunderphonia from Oakland’s Mark Gergis is a minor gem. Ranging from frankly infantile scatological cut-ups of simpering folk singers to rather more chilling explorations of diseased, fascistic Americana, the work is bound together by imaginative instrumental interludes…. -- Kieth Moline

Aquarius Records:
… Porest dis-assembles the world, leaving no cultural and musical stone unturned, to create a twisted, irreverant, post-folk ethnography. ...Sprinkled throughout are instrumental numbers of equally dis-membered cultural origin, on par with Stock, Hausen & Walkman. Brew yourself a hot cup of Oolan tea, slam several shots of hard NyQuil and let Porest lead you on a journey through musical un-history.

electronicmusicworld.com:
…. Porest slices open fresh sutures with its sharp, subversive tracks and penchant for absurdities... this one man "band" makes music that coagulates into comical clots of sharp tongued barbs and delectable electronic detritus. -- Michelle Valdez

Village Voice:
Elsewhere he constructs field-recording documentaries from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but on Porest's Prude Juice for the Heritage Swinger, Mark Gergis splices agrarian-to-urban ethnographical montage and fittingly co-releases it on Seeland, Negativland’s own post-SST label. A founding member of SF Bay genre-bending pranksters Mono Pause, Gergis lets rip… it's a pleasing Folkways rarity spit out by Pierre Henry. -- Brandon Stosuy

San Francisco Bay Guardian:
...Hilarious, riveting, soothing, provocative, historical, au courant, global, and downright danceable at times, Prude Juice is an ingenious collage of music and vocals that manages to capture, twist, and turn our collective sonic lives on their head....Electronic details, tribal-esque drums, twangy guitars, analog-synthesizer riffs, AM radio hosts, farm animals, eerily lifelike automated voices, educational film soundtracks, and environmental recordings…are expertly brought together in a way that harks back to Bongwater, Ween, Raymond Scott, and DJ Shadow but uses completely new palettes. -- MP Klier

Hater:
… Sadly, the result is a largely forgettable album that fails to excite on the basis of innovation and fails to connect in terms of rhythmic or melodic hooks. I mean, if this sort of sound experimentalism doesn't sound fresh and fun, why are we listening? Snippets of ...interviews with old men and vintage audio are brought together in a brew that sounds weak and aged ..... Declaring the intention of your project isn't an assured route to success.... -- Mike Baker