If there is one thing that I did not like about 2013, it was that Mark Johnson moved out of town (but at least we had him for a good chunk of the year). MJ is a living conduit of the bubbling, breathing, scorching, wheezing meeting of noise and beat oriented electronic music that has grasped underground music USA in its clutches. I’ve seen so many great performances over the years because of this guy that it makes me sick. And in the midst of all this tremendous organizing of insane sounds the man’s music has become a full throttled monster of lost and disoriented electronic gadgetry.

TRUCK STANLEY’S NIGHT DREAMS is at least one of Mark’s solo thing(s), and in this project he brings all that I love about bent electronic music to the table. This music assaults the listener as it should. It has the power to disorient (and I know that many of you sickos are into that), and it also has the power to reorient. It oscillates between these states via Johnson’s keen grasp of the groove, and just how to properly mutilate it. Sounds shift, rhythms shift, and while you were trying to maintain your balance you started shimmying. It is a twisted mind that makes music this ecstatically fucked up.

WHEN I WAS A BEAST IN THE WOODS is the name of a tape that TRUCK STANLEY’S NIGHT DREAMS put out earlier this year on Andy Allen’s FRIENDSHIP CEREMONIES tape label. It’s to the brim with experimental passages: from the spastic blip turned nightmare dance music of “Gut Path” to the stuttering funk of “Working Path” with it’s tantalizing hints of melody wandering like some brave little girl through a warped electronic forest.

Get to know Mark Johnson. HUNNIE BUNNIES, BANG BROS!, this project and others beyond, they all have Mark’s stamp on them. He’s down in Philly now (I think) with the other Johnson (fully taking the un out of the Hun and the Bun), but if you’ve been a good little girl or boy, and you pay attention, you might just catch a glimpse of this night dude prowling these parts from time to time.