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A live soundtrack performance of ‘Tape Letters from the Waiting Room’ at Barboncino (above the Golden Pudel club) in Hamburg.

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. Mark Vernon performs an immersive live soundtrack to an extended cut of the film by Steve McInerney.

A live soundtrack performance of ‘Tape Letters from the Waiting Room’ in Berlin.

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. Mark Vernon performs an immersive live soundtrack to an extended cut of the film by Steve McInerney.

With Absurd Lustre – a search for a trans-dimensional exotica where deeper listening, sound poetry and genre experimentation can take place.

It takes the form of an extensive interview with a focus on one particular release – in this case my ‘Time Deferred’ album from earlier this year.

You can read the full interview here.

On the 18th August I will be performing alongside Yves de Mey and Nika Son at a special Entr’acte label night. For this event I will create a live soundtrack to an extended cut of the film ‘Tape Letters from the Waiting Room’ directed by Steven McInerney (released as an LP on the Psyché Tropes label 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 with an original soundtrack by Mark Vernon culled from his collection of domestic tape recordings, audio letters, found sounds and other lost voices.

Throughout August I will be continuing a residency at Q-O2 – a workshop for experimental music and sound art in Brussels.

The project I am working on is a reprise of the Magneto Mori series. For this iteration, ‘Magneto Mori: Bruxelles / Brussels’ I will be recording people’s earliest memories direct to open reel tape. This tape will be cut into pieces and buried in the ground for 2-weeks along with magnets that will partially erase the recordings before being excavated and used as the basis for a new composition. The process is an analogy for the frailty of human memory and our ability to recall the past.

Where: IKLECTIK
‘Old Paradise Yard’
20, Carlisle Lane (Royal Street corner – next to Archbishop’s Park)
SE1 7LG
When: Saturday 23 July 2022 | 3pm – 5pm
Tickets: £8 Adv / £13 OTD

Tickets available from IKLECTIK here.

An afternoon of superb acousmatic music from internationally renowned composers Natasha Barrett and Mark Vernon, using the 13.4 ambisonic sound system!

For more details see here.

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.

My latest album Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror will be released as a CD on Greek label Granny Records this summer. The CD and download will be available for pre-order through their Bandcamp very soon.

The album draws together a number of works made from recordings found, taken or gathered in Scotland between the years 2000 and 2020.

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

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.