Doug Mosurock, Still Single on Mattress' 'Low Blows':

"Legitimate minimal synth gets recorded, and the tapes are left to melt in a hot car like a Snickers. That’s the figurative M.O. of Rex Marshall, as Mattress – genuine weirdness, besmirched by these times of shitty lo-fi crap, but coming out as its own thing. Marshall employs that sort of vocal blandishment like Jon Glaser on TV’s “Delocated,” which informs the martial, clampdown synthesizer in long, arduous strokes, and plays more like one in a long line of isolationist innovators, from the Xex people to John Bender and Neil Hamburger. There’s a little bit of sleaziness to the whole thing, like it could slip into some seedy, non-existent cocktail lounge or the middle of a Ween record, that really helps you notice that Marshall has written real songs and is not just dicking around with spontaneous, uninspired notions. Favorites are “Gone to Waste,” a hipgrinder out of DEVO Corporate Headquarters, and “Roll Roll Roll,” which sounds like a Cars record baked into one of those record bowls from, like, Readymade magazine, and gets satisfyingly crunchy at the end. Bottom line is that the songs are great, and the delivery funny and weird, but with confidence. Put down the Digital Leather records and step to the real. 500 copies, clear vinyl."

http://still-single.tumblr.com/

7-inches Every Day Blog on Adam Payne 7-inch:

"The 'Maybe' Side is a track from 2006; 'Onallisalland'. Great booming kick drum pounding through the speakers right away, with a peppy carnival organ pounding, like that (I had to look it up, it was one of those things driving me completely insane). The vocals are distorted with a bunch of layers, so I think it's going into a garagey feeling thing until the acoustic guitar comes in perfectly clean...no 'low-fi' filter on the whole thing here. The vocals get further and further out there with a doppler phaser thing taking over by the end, it's always changing enough and catchy to keep me going back to the beginning for another listen. A little Kurt Vile sounding even, solid pop with some interesting influences and experiments.
There's that playful feel to the recording, to hell with mistakes, there aren't any, just keep it, the more over the top the better, the first take is always the good one, when you aren't even trying. Combine with that California attitude and 'Everything's alright'... over and over...indeed. It certainly sounds like it.

The 'Side Lline' Side, '...if you...' is from 2009, an acoustic based track, deep on the muffled bass end, so you know you're hearing lots of punched down tracks upon tracks.He doubles layers of vocals here, through a messed up mic, swapping back and forth every verse with a shaker sound left and right. Those little details let me know there's a lot of thought here, in crafting essentially a pop song, but pushing the weirdness as far as possible. It's still related to the '06 track on the A-Side, same foundation of style. I heard he has a that's nothing like this, so if these are demo's or side project things....well I want more. I think it's a lot like if Ween covered Nodzzz, start with that laid back vibe and then speed up the vocals, throw in a serious fuzz guitar solo, out of nowhere, sincere ridiculous vocals and you'd have some idea of where the Payne is going, it's classic 4-track, go where no one has gone before goodness."

http://7inches.blogspot.com/