Mrenc

By Jason Ferguson
PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

Mrenc – All Around Surround
New Granada
It’s actually a little weird that All Around Surround is the first proper release from Lakeland’s Mrenc (Eric Collins). Collins has been pretty prodigious over the past few years, releasing a fairly steady stream of free digital singles, splitting a couple of releases with the likes of Tampa’s King of Spain and Jacksonville’s Sunbears!, and maintaining a positive and intense social media presence that’s refreshingly humane. In other words, I feel like I’ve already experienced a half-dozen albums’ worth of Mrenc, but nope: All Around Surround is the first official release from Collins since the dissolution of his former bands, Denison Marrs and the Dark Romantics, both of which were pretty great bands that never quite got the praise they deserved.

Hopefully, All Around Surround will write a different chapter for Collins, and it certainly should. The half-dozen songs on the CD release (there are two more on the vinyl) make for a listen that’s all too brief, but within those tracks, Collins cuts a polystylistic swath that’s invigorating and occasionally dizzying. The opening track (“The Architects”) somehow manages to be both forceful and a little dark, and then, thanks to the driving percussion, swampy guitars and overdriven chant-vocals, that mood segues into “Wolves,” which operates using similar ingredients, but with a more poppy interpolation of them.

By the time the EP closes out with the sprawling, melancholy spleen-venting of “Cover Me,” Collins’ songs have explored dirgey blooz-thud (“Your Call”), four-on-the-floor post-punk (“Elsg”) and basically every other permutation of viscerally expressive art-rock. It feels like a decidedly personal record, but Collins also never seems to give too much of himself, shrouding both his vocals and his guitars in an obfuscating reverb soup. And while all of the songs here seem to share a similar outlook and production ethos, Collins allows himself considerable room to maneuver as Mrenc, resulting in an EP that manages to be both consistent and diverse. - Orlando Weekly

Somewhere amidst the Airstream trailers, high grass, exhaust smoke, and long stretches of Interstate 4 is Orlampa, Fla. That’s where you’ll find MRENC, and while Eric Collins has also been the heart and soul of other beloved Sunshine State acts like Denison Mars and The Dark Romantics, his current artistic direction is one that should not be ignored.
A new mini-LP, All Around Surround, sees the light (via Tampa-based imprint New Granada Records) on Sept. 10, and the release finds Collins following his muse to a place where echoed vocals, frighteningly jangly guitars, and blood-warming bombastic drums assault ear canals in an unapologetic and infinitely pleasing way.
It’s hard to say that there is a ‘Florida Sound’, and it’s efforts like these that make the task of trying to pindown what it means to be a Florida music-maker so much fun. - Suburban Apologist

From the panhandle all the way to Key West, the Sunshine State is a strange concoction of transients looking for warm weather and born-and-raised types who wouldn’t dare leave home. Mrenc’s debut mini LP All Around Surround is a close-to-perfect soundtrack for all of those sunburned, salt-washed souls. Calling the heart of Florida (aka “Orlampa”) home, Mrenc mastermind Eric Collins — a former member of beloved FL acts Denison Marrs and The Dark Romantics — comes to Microgroove (HQ for treasured Tampa record label New Granada) for a free show celebrating Surround’s eight tracks which range from jangly, echo-drenched anthems (The Architects) to brooding, apocalyptic meditations (The Wolves). - Tampa Bay Times

From the panhandle all the way to Key West, the Sunshine State is a strange concoction of transients looking for warm weather and born-and-raised types who wouldn’t dare leave home. Mrenc’s debut mini LP All Around Surround is a close-to-perfect soundtrack for all of those sunburned, salt-washed souls. Calling the heart of Florida (aka “Orlampa”) home, Mrenc mastermind Eric Collins — a former member of beloved FL acts Denison Marrs and The Dark Romantics — comes to Microgroove (HQ for treasured Tampa record label New Granada) for a free show celebrating Surround’s eight tracks which range from jangly, echo-drenched anthems (The Architects) to brooding, apocalyptic meditations (The Wolves). - Tampa Bay Times

by LEILANI POLK

The cover of All Around Surround is a light pollution map of Florida tilted against a featureless black backdrop, a visual that gels with the album’s tensely coiled post-punk and driving percussion-imbued indie rock dosed in lightly experimental ambiance. The first proper solo release from Mrenc (the pseudonym of Lakeland-based New Granada Records artist Eric Collins, of the late Dark Romantics) carries dark dissonant notes, from the chorus of calling vocals, percussive chugging thrust and guitar-jangling urgency of lead-off single “The Architects,” to the stripped-down closer “Cover Me,” made up of strummed guitar, swirling ambient sonics and Collins’ echoing layers of vocals. (Critic's rating: 3.5 stars.) Mrenc performs a free in-store celebrating his album’s completion and hawks copies of All Around Surround this Saturday afternoon at Microgroove, the local indie record shop owned by none other than New Granada’s Keith Ulrey - Creative Loafing

Coaxing, Cold War Kids-ish bedroom pop from the Sunshine State. - RCRD LBL

The MRENC tracks will delight pop rock and indie snobs alike with frantic guitar sounds, a small dose of eerie keyboard and catchy vocals. If the Strokes and Apples In Stereo had a fight, this would be the post dust-up forgiving embrace... - EU Jacksonville