Out of stock
CD
Mark VAN HOEN
“Invisible Threads”
All titles composed and recorded by Mark Van Hoen in Los Angeles 2016.“[…] Other Touch artists were also an influence here – Claire M Singer, Jana Winderen and as ever Chris Watson (who has been an enduring influence from the moment I first heard Cabaret Voltaire in 1979)… along with my project ‘drøne’ with Mike Harding… the collaborative aspect of drøne brought up a few new paths in itself.During the time I was recording the album I was editing audio and sound design for films – this too went some way to defining the structure and sound of ‘Invisible Threads’. At the time of recording several of the titles on the album, I had re-read ‘The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion’, a short story by Edgar Allen Poe… and in some ways this record is a soundtrack to that.The title ‘Invisible Threads’ refers to the intangible connection between all of the musical and personal influences that brought this record into being.”Instrumentation/sound sources : Modular synthesizer notably using modules manufactured by Make Noise, The Harvestman & Mutable Audio. Software – Ableton Live, Pro Tools and many plugins – heavily used were Max, Soundhack and Native Instruments’ Reaktor & Kontakt. Fender Rhodes piano, Fender Jaguar guitar. Farfisa Organ, Vox continental.
Original price was: 12,50€.7,00€Current price is: 7,00€.
Out of stock
2 LP
Mark VAN HOEN
“The Revenant Diary”
3 sides 2LP. All titles composed by Mark Van Hoen. Recorded in Brooklyn & Woodstock NY USA 2011. All instruments & processing by Mark Van Hoen with additional vocals by Georgia Belmont. Cover art by Stephen O’Malley. “Don’t look back”, repeats one of several voices within Mark van Hoen’s The Revenant Diary, his fifth solo album and first release on Editions Mego. Surrounded by weighted beats, analogue synthesizer drones and granular dirt, the unidentified, siren-like female voice’s advice is as much seduction as warning. Tellingly so, for as well as being both Van Hoen’s most ambitious and his most accessible work, The Revenant Diary is an eloquent meditation on the allures and dangers of memory, regret and nostalgia. The album’s foundation was shaped by a memory and a chance encounter. While remastering some of his early 90s releases and Peel Session tracks, Van Hoen - a founding member of Seefeel, who also worked as Locust and in Seefeel offshoot Scala and has collaborated with Slowdive, Robert Fripp, Edison Woods & Esben and the Witch amongst others - happened upon a track he had recorded in 1982. Attracted by its simplicity, he was inspired to record the basis of The Revenant Diary on 4-track tape, using a minimal set-up, reminiscent of his first early 80s musical adventures as a young teenager. The recollection of one of these - a 13 year old Van Hoen’s experiment in reel-to-reel tape recording of an ineffectual pop song playing on the radio, which spuriously transformed it into a spooky amalgam of backwards church organ and unintelligible voices - provided an evocative inspiration. The Revenant Diary pivots on this combination of complex reflection and simplified technology. A determinedly analogue affair, it brims over with Van Hoen’s signature sounds: immersively decayed drones, almost broken ambient surfaces and lulling rhythms, with granular crackle providing spectral grit. Fragments of female vocals pepper the album, and notably dominate the 10-minute epic “Holy Me”, one of Van Hoen’s most complex compositions, in which non-verbal sounds rub delicately against each other in an otherworldly choral composition. Less song-based than his last solo work, the well-received Where Is The Truth [City Centre Offices, 2010], its palette and structure are more descendants of the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments, which utilised a similar combination of decayed atmosphere against a granular / glitch rhythmic structure. Tracks like “Laughing Stars At Night” and “Unknown Host” exude a powerful emotional undertow, as alluringly woozy as they are intensely contemplative. But this is no exercise in Instagram-style disposable nostalgia. Van Hoen’s adroit juxtapositions of gauzy textures evoke the blurred luminescence of 16mm film and the rich, colour-saturated hues of rediscovered Polaroid photos, as the cover artwork, designed by Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley, acknowledges. The Revenant Diary expertly renders displaced memory daze in lushly melodic, gently delirious electronic sound.”
Original price was: 14,00€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.