It can be difficult to keep tabs on the elusive entity known as Mamiffer. Originating as the a studio project centered around Faith Coloccia, former mastermind of the Southern California desert-based experimental music collective Everlovely Lightningheart, the first Mamiffer recordings were driven by somber piano instrumentals and backed by a rotating cast of musicians who lent martial drum patterns, rumbling distorted bass, melodic vocal incantations, and swaths of abrasive guitar. Mamiffer eventually gravitated towards a core duo of Coloccia and husband Aaron Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom), yet the project continued to morph and evolve as guest contributors came and went. The group rarely performed live, and when the band did opt to play a show, they were more likely to play an Eastern European squat or a small club in Tokyo than one of the standard rock clubs in their home state of Washington.

Statu Nascendi is the band's first full-length since 2011's Mare Decendrii, though that isn't to imply that Mamiffer has been quiet for the last three years. Since Mare Decendrii's release, Coloccia and Turner have released a collaboration with Chicago noise experimentalists Locrian, teamed up for split releases with Texan soundscapers Pyramids and Finnish art metallurgists Circle, and issued more than a few limited edition cassettes. If Mamiffer's self-imposed exile to the rustic enclave of Vashon Island in Washington's Puget Sound wasn't enough to lower their profile, their dearth of live appearances and their gravitation towards old formats for their releases helped solidify their stature as a clandestine underground unit.

And then Mamiffer did something uncharacteristic in the fall of 2013: they did a large club tour opening for the majestic French black metal band Alcest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the group opted to further distinguish themselves from the more metal sounds of the evening by shedding auxiliary members and reducing the band to its core of Coloccia and Turner. While Mamiffer has always eschewed rock clichs, they parted ways with even more conventions for the tour--drums were excised, distorted guitars were kept to a minimum, the use of space and repetition were pushed beyond the realms of the average metalhead's attention span. The result was a 40-minute set that conjured the restrained minimalism of early Low, the stark territories of Blixa Bargeld's solo work, and the textural sensitivity of Fennesz. Upon finishing the tour, Mamiffer returned to the Pacific Northwest and tracked their set live at Avast Studios with Randall Dunn (Earth, Marissa Nadler, Sunno)))), on November 16th, 2013. The resulting four tracks are Statu Nascendi.

While Statu Nascendi's four tracks span 37 minutes, Coloccia is hesitant to view it as the band's third proper full-length. Rather, she sees it as a "transitional album to the full-length coming out next year." Statu Nascendi keeps to Mamiffer's ongoing theme of humankind's deep ties to nature, and then delves deeper to explore the nexus of life and death, the significance of matriarchal blood lineages, and the purging relationship between birth, rebirth, and exorcism. The percussive element to Mamiffer has been virtually eliminated on these four songs. Not only are drums completely absent, even Coloccia's percussive piano lines are kept to a minimum, with ethereal washes of guitar, organ, tape loops of field recordings, and Coloccia's hypnotic vocals serving as the foundation to the songs.
- Brian Cook, October, 2014