Mere Mortals, a five year side-project of native Vancouver/Bucharest producer/composer Dan Handrabur, has now come to the forefront of his creative output and reflects his many world, downtempo and dub influences. Joined on occasion with sweet vocals from his long time collaborator and wife is Kristina Handrabur, Mere Mortals have given us the honor of releasing their second album Universal Code – recorded at the legendary Outersanctum Studios now back in Romania since the summer of 1999.

For those who picked up the first Mere Mortals’ full length - Ethnic Dub Simmphony In Ten Parts which appeared on Vancouver based Map records in 1997, Dan’s serious production talent will be no surprise. Classically trained, he plays and programs his instruments beautifully, and since the move back East, some gypsy sounding influences have also found their way into the brew.

Migrating to Canada in the late 80’s, Handrabur quickly emerged from Vancouver’s thriving community of electroni-culturists with his classic 1993 compilation release Outersanctum - Frequencies From The Edge Of The Tektonic Plate, on his own Outersanctum label. Most renowned for full length Hard to Kill under the Weed alias (Nettwerk Records 1999) and as Mere Mortals on Wax Trax's Ethnotechno Compilation in 1994, Handrabur ultimately flourished as one of the key figures to define what later became known as the “West Coast Sound”. His many aliases have included Dreamlogic (Map/Interchill 1994-1998), Han, (Interchill 1998), and the album Vuemorph (Silent/Outersanctum 1994), as well as collaborations with many of Vancouver's most creative minds ; Off And Gone (Harthouse/EyeQ/Exist Dance 1995-1996), Floatpoint (Sun-Europe/Apollon-Japan 1995), Landhip (Map Records 1996) all with Phil Western, and Xdrone (Xdrone/Dossier 1992-1993) with Adham Shaikh, to name a few.