Author: Mark

“How long does it take for something to peak, become outdated, and return in a nostalgic rush, a pleasantly retro experience? Some might say this occurred with vinyl (although it was never really gone), Polaroids and bell bottoms. This week Mark Vernon turns his attention to slide shows, whose origin can be traced back centuries to “magic lantern slides”, but whose 35mm glamour peaked in the mid-twentieth century. During that time, some even paid to see slide shows, although a more derided version was the home slide show, a horror to which neighbours subjected each other upon return from their vacations. On Call Back Carousel, Vernon resurrects the audio portion of the slide show in all its glory, adding music to found tapes of slideshow commentary to create a disorienting, time travelling montage.

Readers of a certain age will instantly recognize the sound of the slide projector, which narrowly escaped being made fun of in a Suicide Squad movie; its younger sibling, the overhead projector, took the bullet instead. Classroom and boardroom staples for decades, both were made obsolete by Powerpoint in 1987. But everyone will recognize the voices of older people over-explaining things to anyone who will listen.

The album begins with the a click, waves, birds, a distant opera. The travelogue launches at the Paignton Zoo in 1968, “a very nice beach” according to the narrator. “I don’t know what this bird is,” he continues, explaining his technique. A jaunty song plays in the background, with a happy whistle. “Flamingos – they make a kind of honking noise,” he mansplains. Vernon adds amusing aural cues over the wobbling reel-to-reel; but the track gets really interesting when the narration begins to loop and fall apart, imitating the abrasion of time. Might this man still be outside the exhibit, caught in a time loop, attempting to get Polly to speak?

The Austrian Tyrol is the next stop, with an introduction that sounds like it comes from the tourist board. Slides flutter by in a rush. One thinks of the dullest documentary one has ever endured, spiced up by sound, Vernon acting like a precocious yet brilliant child, adding cuckoo clocks, rail sirens, rushing wind, flowing streams, cowbells and orchestral snippets. A stuttering grown-up calls one spot “the bla-bla-bla and the bla-bla-bla,” making clear what we feared as children; the adults were often bored too. Thank God for that kid in the room that distracted us during such presentations by drawing pictures or making sounds, even if they were sent to the office later.

By “Scotland 1971,” we’re immersed in the spirit of the project. These little aural plays are likely much better than the original products. For long stretches, narration disappears; each sentence sparks a new sonic arrangement. A pause at a bridge leads to traffic; a description of pastures is the beginning of a biophany. To be fair, the original intentions of these slide shows may have been similar: that words and images might spark the imagination. Bagpipes are sampled and applied like aural paint. The machine falters at the end, firing rapidly before dying in a groan.

“Torquay 1969” is the “summer track,” covering a trip to the beach, water skiing, fishing, ice cream, and other summer sounds. The Hawai’an music prompts a question for the listener: which aspect of the recording is the most evocative? Is it the description of summer reverie, the field recordings of summer fun, the song? Travelling back in time, what might an original viewer have felt: jealousy or empathic joy?
While slide shows are no longer a thing, they have mutated into something else: let me show you pictures of my vacation on my phone. Our attention spans have grown even shorter, making these shows much shorter than the presenters might desire. The narrative arc disappears, replaced by the sharing of only the best shots. But in this, something has been lost.

While seldom enthralling and often dull, the classic slide show produced a short story in the form of a travelogue, an art in its own right, whose spirit Vernon captures through a neighbouring discipline. Twelve minutes of vicarious travel (the average length of each track) is not too much to ask of one’s friends, and Call Back Carousel helps us to recall the charm of an antiquated mode of presentation. By restoring dignity to the slide show, Vernon makes the practice worthy of re-evaluation.”

Richard Allen, A Closer Listen, June 2023

“Glaswegian sound artist and radio producer Mark Vernon collages an “audio time-travelogue” on ‘Call Back Carousel’, using found tapes from hobbyists and amateur recordists that were originally intended to accompany slideshows.

Back in the 1960s and ’70s, hobbyist photographers would put together slideshows of 35mm photographs, documenting trips to the beach or to the zoo. Sometimes, these events were accompanied by pre-recorded commentaries, spliced with music and environmental recordings to create a cinematic narrative. And for the last two decades, Vernon has been collecting reel-to-reel tapes from the era, cleaving the commentaries from their visuals and working them into rich soundscapes that tell of a quaint, eccentric Britain that’s almost faded completely from view.

The first piece is made up of 1968 recordings from Devon’s Paignton Zoo, opened with a slide machine click and some scene-setting environmental sounds. Music hall memories underpin an old man’s voice, who describes the day out: “I don’t know what this bird is,” he moans. As the piece develops, Vernon’s collage techniques get more distinct, with microphone noise and musical snippets creating the mood while voices connect us with the lived history. The rest of the album plays similarly: a visit to the Austrian Tyrol, a trip to Scotland, a day out in Torquay and a beach vacation at Brighton are realized in stereo, with all the humour and quiet familiarity you’d hope for.”

Boomkat, June 2023

“The first noise you hear on Call Back Carousel sounds almost like a cassette being popped into a tape player, but on closer inspection, could also be the sound of slides clicking through a projector carousel. You hear that click a lot on Call Back Carousel, a remarkable album by Mark Vernon that beautifully builds from a unique source of found footage: reel-to-reel audio commentaries from lost collections of vacation slides dating to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. What we’re left with on each track is a recording of a description of a picture of an experience had by a stranger. The images are long gone, and the people probably are too. There’s only the impression of an experience, heard in descriptions of weather, pointing out people we’ll never find in backgrounds we’ll never see. Vernon treats the audio with the kind of care and respect reserved for ancient fossils as he restores them through wonderfully descriptive soundscapes and vivid foley design. And gradually, through sound, a picture begins to develop.

These fused audio treatments create a ghostly sensation that brings to mind The Caretaker or even Nurse With Wound—it’s a haunting experience, but Vernon crucially makes it a moving one, too. Call Back Carousel is so seamless, it can be easy to forget the immense labor in applying these sounds or the time spent with these lost voices, trying to hear and see what they saw. At one point in the recording “Torquay, 1969,” a man describes stumbling onto a cave before admitting with audible regret that it was too dark to really photograph, even with the flash. He didn’t even have the right type of film for that with him. Who can plan for that? But Vernon chooses to fill the moment with the sound of dripping water, echoing footsteps, and an atmospheric coldness that must have been deeply inviting in the heat of that summer. It’s like you can see it just as the speaker did 50 years ago. And it doesn’t matter anymore that he forgot the right kind of film, because for a moment, you’re right there with him, and the cave is full of light.”

Bandcamp Daily, Acid Test, Miles Bowe, August 10, 2023

“Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue based on found tapes of pre-recorded commentaries from the 60s and 70s. These commentaries were originally recorded to accompany slideshows for amateur recordists and photographers, which Vernon has used to create his own audio collages and soundscapes.

The five collages that comprise this album are titled and dated according to (presumably) where and when they were originally recorded, and begin with the sound of a slide projector clicking to life.

Our journey starts at Paignton Zoo in England, 1968, where we’re aurally guided through aviaries and monkey cages, and introduced to toucans, parrots and other exotic creatures with varied snippets of fractured old-timey music to accompany us along the way.

Then we’re off to The Austrian Tyrol in 1972, where we’re informed about the three mountain ranges, and the recommended methods of transport and suggested practicalities of getting around this provence. This is against a pretty eerie backdrop of ominous thuds, traffic noises, birdsong and brooding ambience.

After that we find ourselves in Northern Scotland in 1971, combing the long empty beaches and visiting famous castles. With all this we can hear fragments of traditional Scottish bagpipe music, public transport noises, dark drones, tranquil waters and an array of shuffling sounds, among other things.

Then we move onto the seaside port town of Torquay, England in 1969 where the narrator is commenting on what he sees from a parked caravan – the harbour, promenades, gardens, boats etc… while Vernon provides more warped old-timey music and we hear flocks of seagulls and a gathering of people having a good time, being interviewed about their jetskiing/diving experiences and their observations of the sea. Then the narrator goes off mackerel fishing…
The piece ends with some abstract sound experimentation and weird atmospherics, along with more amusing adventure anecdotes and nostalgic music.

We end our journey in Brighton, England in 1971. This composition starts in an ol’ pub (we hear the familiar sounds of people drinking and talking) before quickly moving onto the seafront. The narrator comments on the picture galleries he sees by the pebbly seafront, while in the background we hear people playing on the beaches and waves gently crashing. These recordings are broken up by bursts of old carousel music and various stuttering sounds. Then the narrator takes us to the shops, and talks about some photographs he took along the way. Towards the end of the compositon, the soundscape becomes all woozy and the recordings become more distant, until the whole things fades and disentagrates into nothingness, and we’re left with the lonesome sound of the slide projector idling away before finally being turned off.

‘Call Back Carousel’ is a nostalgic, whimsical, demented and quite melancholic sound journey through historical sites, famous landmarks, tourists spots and must-see places around the globe during a bygone era… accompanied by fragmented musical samples, audio manipulation noises and conceptual sound art experimentation. It’s strange and intriguing, creepy and alluring, bittersweet and playful, haunting and amusing… a mixed bag of emotions, and also creatively adventurous, which makes for a delightful and fulfilling listening experience.”

Audio Crackle, Fletina, August, 2023

“Mark Vernon’s ghostly, immensely moving Call Back Carousel invites us to try and grasp something impossible. Starting with found audio tapes offering narration of someone’s vacation slideshow, Vernon uses foley effects and sound treatments to bring these forgotten experiences to life. The occasional rhythmic click of the carousel flings us somewhere new and unpredictable in time and space, but in these voices we always find the familiar—warmth, humor and a faint sadness at the passage of time. It’s somewhere in that space, between the imagined sounds of those lost photos of an experience no one will ever quite know, that Vernon captures a flickering piece of humanity.”

Bandcamp, Acid Test’s Best Albums of 2023, Miles Bowe, December 11, 2023

“Writing on acousmatic music, composer and musicologist John Palmer speaks on the inherent surrealism of recorded sound, stating “an acoustic sound becomes mysterious, the real becomes surreal, the Known Unknown.” It’s a thought that’s elaborated on by Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Anne Danielsen of the University of Oslo in the essay “The Naturalised and the Surreal: changes in the perception of popular music sound” for the influential Organised Sound journal, noting “One possible consequence of this tendency is that this virtual space can become utterly surreal, displaying sonic features that could never occur in actual physical environments.” All recorded sound has a hint of the uncanny about it and more than a hint of the surreal.

Call Back Carousel is a set of imaginary travelogs that take you on a journey through time as well as space. Each of the five entries is built around a found reel-to-reel tape recording that’s meant to accompany a slideshow. These recordings are then layered with incidental music and found sounds to become dreamlike, phantasmagoric journeys through imaginary landscapes.

“Paignton Zoo, 1968” takes you on a journey past toucans and cockatoos, purring panthers and shrieking gulls. In the distance, muffled waves are heard while crystal radios and spectral choruses pulse in the distance. An Andy Griffith whistle enters, giving the outing a jaunty bounce, until it’s swallowed in a sea of static and bird calls, as our narrator goes full Doctor Zhivago. “The Tyrol, 1972” has more of an official feel, with its audiobook cigarette burns and canned classical music, serving as a sonic tour guide through this alpine landscape. You’ll hear cuckoo clocks and crystal-clear brooks, which just makes it that much more disorienting when the reel starts eating itself like an uroboros.

“Scotland, 1971” makes a journey to the highlands sound like a voyage into the heart of darkness, with its grave intonations and lonesome footsteps, made that much more eerie with its foghorns and fiddles and drowning depths. “Torquay, 1969” is one of the more scattered offerings, with a narrator extolling the virtues of a campsite’s toilet facilities over some slack key luau music until it’s swallowed by the surf, while the mechanics run haywire and slipshod all the while. “Brighton, 1971” is both the most familiar and the most unsettled. It’s an audio documentary of the British child’s dread holiday to the seaside, all barrel organs and gentle waves, which goes soft and strange around the edges, subsumed in a quicksand of whirring motors and analog hums.

Listening to Call Back Carousel, it’s impossible to tell what’s from the reel-to-reel source material and what’s been doctored in post. That’s the fun of it. It’s not trying to be an out-and-out documentary, being more similar to the layered collages of Max Ernst than the naturalist gaze of Jacques Cousteau. These surreal soundscapes end up saying more about the source material than if they were presented as straight field recordings. Yes, these soundworlds don’t exist. Neither do the Brighton of the early ’70s or a late ’60s zoo. The world where elderly relatives might sit us down to show us a slideshow of their vacation is mostly extinct, even. Listening back to these sonic collages invites us to take a trip through the idea of these locales, but it also encourages us to pause and think about endangered technology and the ways of life that go with it. Call Back Carousel invites us to question what we’ve lost while we ponder its soft-focus surrealism and Kodachrome glory.”

J. Simpson, Spectrum Culture, 15th October, 2023

“Call Back Carousel (DISCREPANT CREP102) exhibits and reaffirms a number of familiar tropes and concerns of this unique creator – the interest in obsolete analogue equipment, the rescue of abandoned tapes from the past, and likewise the rescue of voices from amateur tape-makers and home-movie makers from long ago.

Specifically, Vernon is zeroing in on the slide carousel, a set-up which I am now compelled to explain (as is he, in order to convey what he’s doing with this record) – it involved loading your holiday slides into the magazine of a projector which could rotate automatically and show them in a chosen sequence, and (if the home amateur was really clever) could synch up with a pre-recorded cassette tape, most likely a voice-over explaining each photo to the weary viewer in the dark. Many a visiting aunt and uncle have fallen asleep on the dralon sofa watching such a display, one must assume. It’s a selection of these tapes which Vernon has somehow managed to accrue as part of his vast collection of found recordings, and are now redeployed here – pretty much played straight through, although there are the subtle additions of music (played on wobbly cassettes), repeats, loops, and other tape treatments which he does with such care. Flickering images from the past thus come to life, through the creaky speaking voice of a retired gentleman making his banal observations on bird life in Paignton zoo or chatting with holidaymakers on the beach in Torquay.

It’s not just the obsolescence that interests Mark – I don’t know if 35mm Kodak slides are even made any more – but also these fascinating glimpses of ordinary British life which seem to come from a world that is all but vanished now. As ever, Vernon treats this material with sympathy, truly giving a “voice to the people” without a trace of condescension or irony. In fact, the more ordinary (for him) the better; he effortlessly sublimates it into art. I’ve probably mentioned them before in the context of a Mark Vernon review, but compare this with the work of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players from Seattle, who tend towards a more ironic form of presentation, and it might be illustrative. Vinyl release with an extra track available for digital streamers.”

Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector, 9th February, 2025