Author: Mark

“More enjoyable to my macabre ears is Tape Letters From The Waiting Room (PSYCHÉ TROPES TROPES007). Even before you play it, you can tell from that title alone, and the eerie cover image, that we’re pretty much getting a semi-occult transmission here, messages from the beyond, delivered by séance and psychic forces. Vernon’s music here was composed as the soundtrack to a film created by Steven McInnery, a cinematic work which received several citations at experimental film festivals in 2020 and 2021, and was apparently made entirely by splicing together segments of found 16mm footage. McInnery intended to author an “existential drama” and explicitly wanted to explore themes of “death and rebirth” with his edits. I never saw the movie, but it’s evident that Vernon’s sounds here are in total sympathy with the project, taking the listener directly into a strange, spooked-out paranormal world from the instant the stylus hits the grooves. Disembodied voices, ambiguous fragmented stories from abandoned tapes (see Time Deferred, above), backwards tapes and chilling atmospheric moments, all amounting to a suitably unsettling sojourn in this strange world that lies beyond the Veil of Tears. Even Vernon’s track titles are evocative and poetic, for instance ‘A Photograph of a Photograph’ alluding to the mysteries that can be induced by the mechanics of refilming (and indeed reprocessing magnetic tapes, a process that he knows so well); or ‘Beforetime Guests’, a very lyrical way of alluding to the dead visitors arriving at the séance in the form of floating ghastly heads or ectoplasmic manifestations.

In my mind I can’t help connecting this LP to certain records by the Italian artiste Simon Balestrazzi, who has likewise revealed a penchant for the supernatural and the occult in his work, using the tape machine and processed drones as his private portal to visit the “other side”; one excellent example (and a favourite of mine) is the Candor Chasma collaboration, a very evocative set in which it appeared to be possible to travel time to visit certain famous mystics and visionaries of the past. However, Mark Vernon might not exhibit the exact same relish for the supernatural; although this LP is thrillingly weird, what comes over in the final analysis is a sense of longing, regret, nostalgia for the past, and sympathy for our dead relatives and forebears, some of whom appear wreathed in misery and trapped in an endless loop of reliving their past sins. Vernon has consistently exhibited this compassion and warmth, this connection to humanity, throughout all of his unique work, and this is further evidence of it. Vinyl release; issued with a section of 16mm film in the sleeve. Scry your own copy with a magnifying glass to reveal your own personal ghosts lurking in the frames.”

Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector, June 2023

“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

“I fell in love with this the first time I heard it. Mark had sent me an early copy after I reviewed two of his recent albums (In the Throat of the Machine & Magneto Mori: Vienna) in 2021, but I had a hard time finding a way to review it. The previous albums were both easy for me because they relied on specific concepts and clear ideas, but Time Deferred contained neither – instead, this album is held together by a vague feeling.

It’s a cryptic sense of dread, something personal but twisted into a fragmented, Picasso-esque face. It’s a series of audio-dreams and nightmares that are built from dissected memories and subconscious emotions. Each track is rich with something ineffable – be it an ethereal nostalgia, an anxious terror, an unrequited longing, a temporal confusion, or a bitter regret.

In Time Deferred, the concept of ‘time’ contorts into itself – memories and recordings get laid out on a flat plain together like they do in the resting subconscious. Tapes being sped or slowed reflect a mind obsessing on ideas or feelings, while their processed and twisted nature reflects the mutated, stylized way an uneasy mind remembers and feels.

It’s a powerful, cohesive and intricate album that could probably mean something different to anyone who hears it, as they attempt to understand its emotions and experiences with their own. If there is one album I’d like to recommend from this year, it’s this.”

Harmonic Series – Connor Kurtz, January 1st, 2023

“Put on the circuit via Felix Kubin’s very own artist run and curated label Gagarin Records on February 25th, 2k22 is “Time Deferred”, the latest full length album outing by Glaswegian sound artist x radio producer Mark Vernon.

Presenting a new body of work covering a total of seven new compositions laid out over the course of roughly 40 minutes playtime Vernon once again dives deep into the wondrous sounds provided by found magnetic tape and the ghostly, otherworldly presence which haunts them, with his work described by Chris Whitehead of The Field Reporter as ‘…film noir for the ears…’. And rightfully so as the composer builds an array of carefully arranged cinematic collages from scratch, starting with the dark nocturnal droning and slightly retro-futurist bleeps and sweeps of probably modular origin found alongside slightly off-kilter string works in the suggestively named “The Object Invoked Has Disconnected From Its Host” which later turns into spine-tingling sonic horrors with its combination of muffling voices and haunted atmospheres whereas “The Wrong Platform (Nothing Stops Here After 5)” presents wows, flutters and tectonic shifts bleeding into our reality from the transdimensional outerworld whilst “Athanasia” is taking Dark Ambient x Deep Listening Music to a new, subaquatic level. With “Benign Acquiescence” Mark Vernon continues on a similarly minimalistic path into Deep Listening territories, “A Coincidence Of Deceleration And Acceleration” combines warm, overwhelming low frequency sine pulses with off kilter flute echoes and decaying personal messages of unknown origin before “His And Hers And The Sun” brings forth more droning, nocturnal and certainly danger heralding melancholia which could well find its way as a score piece into certain sci-fi alien slasher movies which finds its continuation in the concluding cut that is “The New Game Of Emulation”. A thrilling and therefore highly recommended listening experience, this.”

Baze Djunkiil, Nitestylez.de, March 23rd, 2022

“Time Deferred appeals to me personally because of its skewed / bizarre and slightly menacing elements…it manages to sustain a pretty dark tone throughout both sides of its atmospheric grooves, and lives up to the “solo noir album” promise from the label press notes. Matter of fact “solo noir” is a nifty turn of phrase, suggesting an existential detective who only works on supernatural cases, and is photographed at work by James Wong Howe. Vernon seems to be working very hard to alter and disrupt his sources on this item, pushing recognisable shapes and images below the murky surface, so that if any half-familiar form bubbles to the surface it soon sinks down into his wizard’s brew and dissolves into a soft stew of sinews. There may be tunes, there may be buried voices, but their continuity is deliberately disrupted, and there are layers of distortion to further the sense of unreality.

I love a record that makes me feel like I’m dreaming, or lying on my bed of sickness, and Time Deferred passes on a lot of these sensations which, to a normal person, would probably be unwelcome, but not to me. There are found tapes (I assume), dialogues telling odd stories which make no sense or are never completed – I suspect these are retrieved from Vernon’s hoard of such tapes, which he finds on discarded answerphone recordings or charity shop cassettes, where the unsuspecting public have unwittingly been a shade too revealing about their personal life as they recorded a message for their wife or neighbour, little knowing that their indiscretion would one day surface decades later in the context of tape art music. In its construction, which feels almost “symphonic” in its sweep, Time Deferred manages to create a very disorienting experience, where the listener constantly asks what-is-it and where-are-we as we are dragged deeper into this nightmare world. In this fugue-like compositional structure, Mark Vernon proves himself much more adept at unleashing the terrifying power of tape than many contemporary electro-acoustic composers. Dennis Tyfus did the cover drawing; I very much like his work in general, and the black and red colour scheme here is fully suited to the contents of the album, but even so his odd image falls a bit short of being truly disturbing.”

Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector, June 2023

“Streicher versinken im Abgrund, als wäre 33 rpm die falsche Abspielgeschwindigkeit, nur ein leises, flüchtiges Zwitschern widerspricht, auch wie von Staub und Schimmel überzogene Stimmen gehen unter in surrendem Noise. Das Gefühl, ungewollt in eine Privatsphäre eingedrungen zu sein, findet aber nur ein unheimliches Dröhnen, Flattern, Pulsen und Plätschern als Rückzugsmöglichkeit. [A Coincidence of Deceleration and Acceleration:] Wieder irritiert eine Tonbandstimme mit Fetzen aus einem Audiobrief. Zu einer surrenden Spur setzt Vernon hell piepende Impulse und geisterhaft fernen Trompetensound, der mit einer gewissen Schärfe expandiert, so dass sich die Impulse umso komischer abheben.”

Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy 113