Mehran never escaped the shadow of Test Icicles, even as his solo music surpassed his old band. I was reintroduced to the American-Australian musician’s work a decade ago by the YouTube algorithm: 90210, a cassette tape Mehran recorded with NY experimenter James Ferraro, remains one of my favorite internet discoveries to this day. Blown-out butt-rock for an ‘80s lite beer ad is looped over and sent in weird and wonderful directions over the course of 30 minutes. Mehran recorded the project under the alias Sam Meringue; a quick Google search brought me back into Mehran’s world, and into his primary outlet, Outer Limits Recordings.
Outer Limits Recordings is not a perfect 1:1 with “Ulterior Motives.” While it mostly inhabits the lysergic pop world of R. Stevie Moore, it also veers into pure sound experiments. Newcomers should start with the 2013 collection Singles, Demos, and Rarities (2007-2010); the project contains songs where Mehran puts his best pop foot forward (“$20 Dollar Bill,” “Liberty,” “I Need My T.V.”) and stranger moments too, like the Throbbing Gristle thump of “Mind Kontrol (Ultra).” Listening to that compilation, it doesn’t take long before “Ulterior Motives” begins to sound like something Mehran could have written, or, at least, the kind of thing he loved to write.
Mehran committed suicide in 2018; 2021 saw the release of Cold Brew, his final album and the first to be released under his own name. There wasn’t a massive resurgence of interest in Mehran’s work, and the critical appraisals of his music were muted at best. It’s a bitter pill, even if Mehran did work in the fringes, but it’s sweetened somewhat by the kind of music he made as OLR: full-length songs you might have only heard a second of on a moldy VHS that’s been taped over into oblivion. It’s basically lostwave, for the here and now.