Minorarc is a progressive metal, dark classical and electronic experimental music project by Australian producer / underground community founder Ivan Bullock. A sonic exploration of despair and regret, built through piano, guitar, bass and synthesis.
The debut album “Minorarc” was released in 2010, a relentless shift from earlier works (Mystral Tide project 1999-2010), into a new world of sonically-realised decay and urban ruin.
Several performances and four years on, an Involution EP was quietly released as a collection of new material and re-interpretations. Classical and orchestral rivers flowed through a metallic guitar wasteland of discontent and decline.
Now in 2021, Minorarc is back in the studio and working on their second full-length album.
Minorarc would like to thank its contributors, Ben of Cassandra’s Myth / Sleeplab and Brett of Sarcophony for their bass and vocal guest artistry in this project to date.
History
Ivan was born in the mid 70s and enrolled in Piano and Violin training at a young age in his home town, Canberra. By the teens, he had focused exclusively on Violin, enjoying a point of difference by not just having the only white instrument case in town, but also playing an instrument lovingly crafted by his (now deceased) Father (a part time instrument maker), from a striking African hard wood “Zebrano”. By the age of 18 however, neck injury sustained from prolonged use of the instrument put an end to music creation.
During the next few years Ivan experimented with the digital arts and set about listening to a broad range of music from progressive and metal, through to industrial, ambient, and classical. The late 1990′s saw a large personal adjustment and long-term move to Tokyo, which became a catalyst for creativity and learning. The intensity, stress and isolation of central Tokyo living also birthed Mystral Tide, leading to years of experimentation with break-beats, piano and hardware synthesis.
Sean Cooper of Zeitgeist Records (Brisbane) produced and funded the first official CD release “Whirlpool of Souls”, which led to performance opportunities in Europe and Japan. Over the next few years two more full albums were released, “Geometry of Loss” a 3 CD set recorded in Tokyo and completed in Melbourne, and “Isle of Narrows” (now available at the Minorarc Bandcamp site), a sorrowful and dark classical journey released in 2009.
After returning to Australia and settling in Melbourne, Ivan began investing time and finances into the general support of underground musicians. For over a decade Dawn Industry (formerly Demus), fought against the commercialised and mundane profit-driven music “industry” through a series of Australian events named Enzyme, providing underground artists a release-platform and regular live performance opportunities.