Author: Mark

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Keeping Time – Radio Art Zone

July sees the debut broadcast of a new 22-hour long radio work I have been working on over the past 6 months.

Keeping Time was commissioned by Radio Art Zone for Esch 2022.

The piece will air from 14:00 CEST on Sunday 10th July until 12:00 noon on Monday 11th July.

Listen live to the full 100 day broadcast on Radio ARA 87.8FM in the South Luxembourg area or listen online to the stream at Radio ARA or Resonance Extra from the 18th June – 25th September, 2022.

Keeping Time is a meditative radio work that focuses on our perception of the passage of time and how time is measured. The piece combines durational recordings of clock workshops around the UK and beyond with a specially constructed ‘radio clock’ painstakingly created from 3,600 individual percussive sounds – 1 for each second of the hour – plus excerpts from interviews with some of the horologists who generously gave up their time for this project.

You can find more details on the piece here.

A radio art project by Radio ARA and Mobile Radio for the European Capital of Culture Esch2022

Imagine a radio station that sounds different every day…

Radio Art Zone is a 100-day radio art station for Esch2022, which will be broadcast in the south of Luxembourg by Radio ARA on 87.8 FM. It will also be live-streamed for a worldwide audience and transmitted by a network of international partners including Resonance Extra.

The Radio Art Zone schedule consists of two daily programmes: newly-commissioned 22-hour radio productions created by more than 100 international and local artists, and 2-hour live shows from kitchens in the community.

Additionally Radio Art Zone offers artist residencies, workshops, youth productions plus interventions in public space, opening up participatory opportunities for residents and visitors to the Capital of Culture region.

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New performance at the Old Hairdressers

This is the postponed concert from January (for reasons no one need ask) with a slight lineup change. Looking forward to playing on a bill with the brilliant Cucina Povera (AKA Maria Rossi) and the amazing Other World (AKA Kay Logan).

When: Saturday, 25th June, 7.30pm
Where: The Old Hairdressers, Renfield Lane, Glasgow.
Tickets: £10 ADV / £13 on the door.

Tickets available from theoldhairdressers.com

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RadioPhonie Festival – Toulouse

The radio work ‘Magneto Mori: Vienna’ (originally commissioned by Kunstradio) will be presented as part of the RadioPhonie Festival in Toulouse, France in June.

Magneto Mori: Vienna is a fragmented sound portrait of the city constructed from found sounds, buried tapes and field recordings. In this de-composition, sounds from Vienna’s past and present are conjoined in a stew of semi-degraded audiotape.

The piece can be heard at 4.30pm on Saturday, 11th June.

The RadioPhonie festival is an event organized by Campus FM and the Center Culturel Bellegarde.

“For this edition, we have imagined an open program that questions the limits of fiction and documentary, which makes room for first works, more well-known radio signatures, and authors from different geographies. Listening sessions are scheduled in the spaces of the Center Culturel Bellegarde, on loudspeakers inside the building, with headphones comfortably seated in deckchairs in the garden. The youngest will find something to brighten their ears with a program dedicated to them. RadioPhonie is also a live proposal with two sound performances to discover in the auditorium and a sound walk on Sunday.”

When: 10th-12th June, 2022
Where: Centre Cutlturel Bellegarde, 17, Rue Bellegarde (métro Jeanne d’Arc), Toulouse, France.
Tickets: Free entry

For further details and the full programme see here.

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Live soundtrack to ‘Tape Letters…’ at the Old Hairdressers, Glasgow

Live at the Old Hairdressers, Glasgow – 8pm, 23rd April, 2022.
Tickets £10

Also on the bill – all the way from Hamburg, Musician, artist and DJ Nika Son – plus Barry Burns and Ollie Pitt duo.

Mark Vernon Will Be Performing A Live Soundtrack To An Extended Cut Of The Film ‘Tape Letters From The Waiting Room’ Directed By Steven McInerney, And Released As An LP On The Psyché Tropes Label At The End Of Last Year.

An Existential Drama Exploring The Universal Themes Of Death And Rebirth ‘Tape Letters From The Waiting Room’ Is An Experiment In Film Archaeology And Magnetic Memory As It Navigates Past Life Experiences. Shifting In Succession From The Mundane To The Metaphysical, The Film Is Composed Of Extant 16mm Found Footage From The Past Century And Features An Original Soundtrack By Mark Vernon Culled From His Collection Of Domestic Tape Recordings, Audio Letters, Found Sounds And Other Lost Voices.

Musician, Artist, Film Composer, Dj After Graduating In Fine Arts At The Art Academy In Hamburg In 2012.

Influenced By Musique Concrète And The Outer Space Of Electronic Music, Her Compositions Are Built From Deformed And Fragmented Fieldrecordings, Interweaving With Analogue Synthesis, Broken Rhythms, Rare Voice Scraps And Modulated Tape.

As A Sound Artist And Film Composer She Became A Dedicated Hunter Of Extraordinary Sounds, While Experimenting With New And Old Technologies In Music. Sounds Of Various Origin Are Translated Into A Very Unusual Musical Language, As If One Watches The Audible.

She Has Played At International Festivals Such As Intonal, Meakusma, IFFR, Klub Katarakt, Nuits Sonores Etc. And Released On Various Labels, Such As Mmodemm, First Terrace Records, Sky Walking, Anti-Ghost Moon Ray And Her Own Imprint Noctui.

In March 2020 Her Debut Album To Eeyore Was Released On The Belgian Label Entr’acte.

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His and Hers and the Sun

A film by Laura Phillips (2022).

Soundtrack by Mark Vernon from the LP ‘Time Deferred’ (Gagarin Records, 2022)

Presented is an abstracted 16mm film made with Orwo UN54 16mm film, hand developed and then overlaid with cameraless filmmaking techniques using washi tape & cyanotype. The recurring motifs of the Blue Marble photo and water draining in a sink with the multiple layering of images can be seen as a reflexive statement about the processing of filmmaking and a playful visual pun about water detritus and waste management. The soundtrack was made by Mark Vernon, a sound artist who works with tactility and intimacy of radio, known for his recycling of field recordings and obsolete media. Both the soundscore and visuals use repetitive rhythms to simulate cyclical systems, be it the water cycles, refuge cycles or ways of looking.
 

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Tape Letters from the Waiting Room

A film by Steven McInerney.

Original Soundtrack by Mark Vernon now available via bandcamp.

An existential drama exploring the universal themes of death and rebirth. Tape Letters from the Waiting Room is an experiment in film archaeology and magnetic memory as it navigates past life experiences. Shifting in succession from the mundane to the metaphysical, the film is composed of extant 16mm found footage from the past century. The original soundtrack by Mark Vernon encompasses a rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, found sounds and other lost voices.

Screenings:
IKLECTIK, TROPES007 Album Launch (Extended cut with live Soundtrack) January 2022
Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival (In Competition, Turkey) November 2021
MICE – 16ª Mostra Internacional de Cinema Etnográfico (Official Selection, Spain) April 2021
9th International Video Poetry Festival (Official Selection, Greece) June 2021
ULTRAcinema 20 (Official Selection, Mexico) November 2020
Proceso de Error 2020 (In Competition, Chile) October 2020
Family Film Project #9 (Honorable Mention, Premiere. Portugal) October 2020
The Delaware Road (Pre-release, extended cut with live Soundtrack) August 2019

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Tape Letters from the Waiting Room

Psyché Tropes / TROPES007 / LP / DL

 
Mark Vernon’s expanded soundtrack to the award-winning film by Steven McInerney. Heavyweight vinyl mastered by Rashad Becker. Comes with a 12-inch 16mm strip of found footage from the film.

An existential drama exploring the universal themes of death and rebirth. Tape Letters from the Waiting Room is an experiment in film archaeology and magnetic memory as it navigates past life experiences. Shifting in succession from the mundane to the metaphysical, the film is composed of extant 16mm found footage from the past century. The original soundtrack by Mark Vernon encompasses a rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, found sounds and other lost voices.

Available to buy here.

All tracks composed and recorded by Mark Vernon.
Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Lacquer cut by Ruy Mariné at Dubplates & Mastering.
Artwork and design by Steven McInerney.

Screenings:
IKLECTIK, TROPES007 Album Launch (Extended cut with live Soundtrack) January 2022
Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival (In Competition, Turkey) November 2021
MICE – 16ª Mostra Internacional de Cinema Etnográfico (Official Selection, Spain) April 2021
9th International Video Poetry Festival (Official Selection, Greece) June 2021
ULTRAcinema 20 (Official Selection, Mexico) November 2020
Proceso de Error 2020 (In Competition, Chile) October 2020
Family Film Project #9 (Honorable Mention, Premiere. Portugal) October 2020
The Delaware Road (Pre-release, extended cut with live Soundtrack) August 2019

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Time Deferred

Gagarin Records / GR2042 LP / DL
 
 
Mark Vernon’s solo noir album – out now on Felix Kubin’s Gagarin records comes in an edition of 300 copies. Cover art by Dennis “Ultra” Tyfus. Design by Meeuw.

Available to buy here.

Caution: this record can cause dreamless nights…

Followers of the artist Mark Vernon will note a subdued and pensive mood on this new record. Monochrome and sepulchral, these tracks are in a minor key, a key which opens the door to a damp cellar of the imagination. Too-many legged spiders crawl over dusty violins. Time lurches, loops and echoes like excursions on slow motion railways in reverse. Concrète noir sombre séances for non-believers. Tauntological voices from the past provoke us. Half guessed ghosts, magnetic phantoms from funereal-to-reel tape recordings. The sibilant persistence of the deceased evokes the exhausted dread of waiting for a medical test result. Enigmatic messages thrown to the werewolves with nothing but cheap medication and some breathing exercises for support.

Reviews:

“…a haunted tone poem that’s full of shadows and a grim, unexplainable mystery.”
Electronic Sound (Issue 87, March 2022)

“Psychedelic visions, blackouts and blinding lights reveal an unusual, sick, and feverish musicality… here the gods come back from the dead only to ensure us an existence nurtured by the freezing rays of a black sun.”
Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up (Feb 2022)

“…an exercise in modern hauntology.”
A Closer Listen (Jan 2022)

Reviews in Full

“There’s a distinctly creepy air hovering over Glasgow sound artist Mark Vernon’s ‘Time Deferred’. We hear brooding sub-soundtrack cellos and the restless ghosts of dead electronics on ‘The Object Invoked Has Disconnected From Its Host’, while a cut-up answer machine recording on ‘A Coincidence of Deceleration and Acceleration’ is simultaneously anguished, nonsensical and stalkerish. And the foreboding drips and distant chanting of ‘Athanasia’ pulse with sinister intent, the centre of a haunted tone poem that’s full of shadows and a grim, unexplainable mystery.”

MS, Electronic Sound (Issue 87, March 2022)

Translated from the Italian:

“The world represented by Mark Vernon is one of deferred time, evoked by somber drones, glowing synth trails, and ambient noises compressed by a slow rhythm of the loops. Psychedelic visions, blackouts, and blinding lights reveal an unusual, sick, and feverish musicality. At the same time, restlessness and anguish are nested in the evanescence of voices reaching out from old magnetic tapes, and later decomposing into degenerate matter, (tautologically, A Coincidence of Deceleration and Acceleration). Hospital-like beeps transmit a subtle uneasiness, as electrodes applied to the brain draw bewildering tracings (The New Game of Emulation).
And while Athanasia represents the idea of immortality in Greek mythology, here the gods come back from the dead only to ensure us an existence nurtured by the freezing rays of a black sun.

”

Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up (Feb 2022)

“Mark Vernon delivers a noir beauty with “Time Deferred”. Classical, experimental, drone, and more filter into the sound. Quite a unique approach there is something eerie about his approach. A timeless tact of sorts these songs seemingly have an ancient quality to them. The Caretaker, Max Richter, and similarly-minded artists count as touchstones, but Mark’s style is his own. Progression of the album features a keen sense of storytelling for the songs play off each other, giving them a hint of aggression to them. By allowing this all to enter into the equation these have a haunted beauty to them.

On “The Object Invoked Has Disconnected From Its Host” the song starts off with a low register stringed drone, for the song has a haunted beauty to it. Even with the classic industrial effects brought in the piece seemingly blooms. Ghostly noises radiate throughout the whole of “The Wrong Platform (Nothing Stops here after 5)” for the song extends out into the infinite. Uncanny notes and a minor key melody go through with “Athanasia”. Deep bass rumbles and cryptic samples work in unison on the album highlight “Coincidence of Deceleration and Acceleration”. Within this piece there is a lot to get lost within. Hard to pin down is the amorphous presence of “His and Hers and the Sun” which feels like an unknown object being dragged across the floor. “The New Game of Emulation” brings it all to a majestic finale with a sound that has a hint of malice to it.

“Time Deferred” feels that there is a degree of intensity to it, with Mark Vernon delving into a whole another cinematic universe.”

Beach Sloth, February 21, 2022

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Time Deferred – New LP on Gagarin Records – Out now

Mark Vernon’s solo noir album – out now on Felix Kubin’s Gagarin records comes in an edition of 300 copies. Cover art by Dennis “Ultra” Tyfus. Design by Meeuw.

Available to buy here.

Caution: this record can cause dreamless nights…

Followers of the artist Mark Vernon will note a subdued and pensive mood on this new record. Monochrome and sepulchral, these tracks are in a minor key, a key which opens the door to a damp cellar of the imagination. Too-many legged spiders crawl over dusty violins. Time lurches, loops and echoes like excursions on slow motion railways in reverse. Concrète noir sombre séances for non-believers. Tauntological voices from the past provoke us. Half guessed ghosts, magnetic phantoms from funereal-to-reel tape recordings. The sibilant persistence of the deceased evokes the exhausted dread of waiting for a medical test result. Enigmatic messages thrown to the werewolves with nothing but cheap medication and some breathing exercises for support.

“Psychedelic visions, blackouts and blinding lights reveal an unusual, sick, and feverish musicality… here the gods come back from the dead only to ensure us an existence nurtured by the freezing rays of a black sun.”

Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up (Feb 2022)

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