“Vernon is a skilful and sympathetic excavator of found tapes, but this time around he didn’t find much of note in the French city of Brest’s flea markets. On the final day, Michel, a contact from the festival Vernon was attending, gave him some of his own family’s reel-to-reel archive, a goldmine of memories preserved in sound. “Lean Developments In Noisy Thoughts”, “Bucolic Plague” and “Every Page A Gentle Wave” present motifs recorded from a TV’s loudspeaker which are knitted into an elliptical, eerily recurring structure.
There’s the sense of life repeating itself not with the computerised logic of the loop, but the impressionistic skim-read of memory. Like fellow UK musician Robin The Fog, Vernon revels in the patina of vintage sounds without locking the listener in place and time.”
Derek Walmsley, The Wire magazine, February, 2024
Mark Vernon likes to explore the sonic environment of a specific geographical setting like an archaeologist. After Lisbon (“Lend and ear, leave a word” released in 2016), Thailand (“Ribbons of Rust” published in 2019), here we are in Brest for the third episode of his of his Audio Archaeology Series. As usual, he mixes field recordings made on site by himself with other recordings made by anonymous people and recovered by chance from flea markets or other encounters. We then witness a confrontation of temporalities in this working method which allows engagement beyond the immediate period of the field recording, creating a network of new connections between past and present. Dissolving chronology into multiple temporal flows. One could imagine oneself in a Philip K.Dick universe! In any case, we’re a long way from the spirit of phonographic postcards, far from the spirit of culture and heritage. It’s more like a collage of found objects, in the intimate interstices of a vanished experience, in the complicit off-field of a reduced listening. The main treatment given to all these recordings lies mainly in the mix highlighting the characteristic of each support, and also in the fact that we sometimes re-record with a mic directly in front of the loudspeaker. The found or recovered recordings carry a grain and a story – at least the one that we make of them. Beyond the magnetic tape itself (for sounds recovered), its quality, its breaths, its weeping and shimmering, it is also the content of the tape itself that carries a story through anecdotes (radio credits), slices of life and even handling defects. And if Mark Vernon’s work can sometimes be likened to radio art, it’s a far cry from radio nostalgia, or the mystification of a regretted past. Here, we’re talking about erosion – in the sense of degradation, deterioration – and saturation – in the sense of excess. Like the image of a world on the brink of collapse. So hurry before the programmed disappearance!
Jérôme Noetinger, Revue & Corrigée (translated from the French – see below for the original)
“Vernon is a long-time producer of radiophonic works, and various are site-specific. ‘Sheet Erosion’ is number three in a series of Audio Archaeology, and this time, he visited the French of Brest. “It comprises field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s.” These tapes are from someone named Michel and reflect his taste in music and radio programmes. Vernon didn’t use cables to capture what was on the recordings but used the speakers and recorded whatever else happened at the same time. There’s a telephone, conversations, the wind howling around the cabin (if indeed it is a cabin. I might be imagining things), people talking and ‘then’ meets ‘now’. The space in which he plays his sounds becomes an instrument of transformation, as do the objects he finds in the place. Sometimes, the speaker gets obscured and muffles the sound; sometimes, the music from the tapes is very recognizable (although, for the life of me, I can’t remember the tune’s name), and not at all. Does Vernon use some kind of processing? Digital or electronic? I thought about it every time I heard this CD, and in these somewhat quieter days before Christmas, there was indeed some more time to listen to it, and I’m unsure. There are bits in here that I think could very well contain some kind of electronic processing. Still, I also considered the possibility that everything he does comes down to unusual ways of capturing his sounds and maybe some filtering, removing specific low or high frequencies. Whatever it is that he does, it adds to the mysterious quality of the music. As always, it has a kind of radiophonic quality combined with the qualities of a great horror movie. Some of this material is very ghostly and obscure, but I appreciate it mainly because of that eerie atmosphere. It doesn’t scare the living daylights out of me, but it has a cosy, creepy sound; the sound of yesteryear, perhaps, a sense of longing for the past. Maybe it’s a conservative zeitgeist thing? Maybe it’s just old age! I love it.”
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, December, 2023
“Mark Vernon aime à explorer l’environnement sonore d’un cadre géographique précis tel un archéologue. Après Lisbonne (“Lend and ear, leave a word” paru en 2016), la Thaïlande (“Ribbons of Rust” paru en 2019), nous voici à Brest pour ce troisième épisode de son cycle Audio Archaeology Series. Comme à son habitude, il mélange enregistrements de terrain réalisés sur place par ses soins avec d’autres enregistrements effectués par des anonymes et récupérés par le hasard des puciers ou des rencontres. On assiste alors à une confrontation de temporalité dans cette méthode de travail qui permet de s’engager au-delà de la période immédiate de l’enregistrement de terrain et de créer un réseau de nouvelles connexions entre passé et présent. Dissoudre la chronologie dans de multiples flux temporels. On pourrait s’imaginer dans un univers de Philip K.Dick ! En tout cas, on est très loin de l’esprit carte postale phonographique, loin de l’esprit culture et patrimoine. On serait plutôt dans un collage d’objets trouvés, dans les interstices intimes d’un vécu disparu, dans le hors-champs complice d’une écoute réduite. Le traitement principal apporté à tous ces enregistrements tient principalement dans le mixage soulignant la caractéristique de chaque support, et aussi dans le fait de parfois réenregistrer avec un micro directement à travers le haut-parleur. Les enregistrements trouvés ou récupérés transportent un grain et une histoire – en tout cas celle que l’on s’en fait. Au-delà de la bande magnétique elle-même (pour les sons récupérés), sa qualité, ses souffles, son pleurage et scintillement, c’est aussi son contenu qui transporte une histoire dans l’anecdote (générique radio), les tranches de vie et même les défauts de manipulation. Et si l’on peut parfois rapprocher le travail de Mark Vernon de l’art radiophonique, on est très loin de radio nostalgie, ou d’une mystification d’un passé regretté. Il est ici question d’érosion – dans le sens dégradation, détérioration – et de saturation – dans le sens de l’excès. Comme l’image d’un monde qui court à sa perte. Alors vite avant la disparition programmée!”
Jérôme Noetinger, Revue & Corrigée
