A veteran of the local music scene, Chris (MAMA) Bauer is predominantly known as a drummer, having manned the skins for Stagmummer, The Vagiants, The Perpetrators and, currently, American Flamewhip.

What people might not know is MAMA is also a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and experimental music-maker who recently released his solo debut, A Universe of Horrors, on local label Transistor 66.

"Excluding the three years I played with The Perpetrators, I spent most of my life with a day job and I think everyone needs an outlet for their stress," Bauer says. "This (music) was my outlet. At times my working life was very stressful, and I could escape within this creative avenue and just explore my creativity and explore the things I really dug that I wasn't really getting with the bands I was in at the time."

A compilation album, Universe of Horrors consists of 19 tracks; one new song and one track from each of his 18 unreleased albums recorded between 1994 and 2009.

"My mentality was that the albums had been somehow released already, but really, only a few of my friends have heard any of this stuff before as I've kept it pretty close to the chest," Bauer says. "As I was constructing the CD itself I was trying to envision, if all the stuff had been released, what kind of trajectory would it be if it was a normal band?"

Completely composed, performed and recorded by Bauer, the music combines elements of jazz, rock, punk and electronic. Bauer says his "space music" is heavily influenced by American avant-garde music group The Residents.

"The kind of sounds they got, they have a lot of electronic sounds, a lot of keyboards, a lot of interesting splicing," Bauer says. "I was getting into the sampling element early on when I was making music, so that translated. On top of that they would have stuff like super fuzzed-out electric guitar and occasionally live drums and other elements that were more organic or acoustic at times. The combination of stuff they were doing intrigued me. It opened the door to saying you don't really need to fit in a genre, you can just do music that you're inspired to do."

Like The Residents, Bauer is also active in the visual arts. Adjusting and distorting pictures in Photoshop, Bauer created the Universe of Horrors' cover, as well as covers for all 18 of his albums, which are featured in the compilation's liner notes. He will be presenting his audio/visual project on March 18 at 7 p.m. at the Winnipeg Art Gallery as part of its 15 Minutes series.

For more on Chris (MAMA) Bauer check out www.myspace.com/ mamagout.

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