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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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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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Tape Letters from the Waiting Room – album launch at IKLECTIK

I’m excited to share details of an upcoming concert at Iklectik in London next Friday. The event is a launch for my new album on Psyché Tropes, ‘Tape Letters from the Waiting Room’ – as well as a charity fundraising event for homeless people. I’ll be performing a live soundtrack to an extended version of the film by Steve McInerney. There is also a fantastic line up of performances and screenings by some other great artists (full details below).

Records will be on sale on the night – or you can purchase copies either through Bandcamp or direct from me by dropping me an email.

IKLECTIK and Psyché Tropes present, ‘Tape Letters From the Waiting Room‘ HOMELESS FUNDRAISING CONCERT

Friday 21 January 2022 | 7:30pm – 12am

Tickets: £12 or more.

All the ticket sales will be donated to Crisis, the national charity for homeless people.
You can buy a ticket here as well as donate on our JustGiving Page.

PROGRAMME:

Hems (DJ set when doors open, in between performances and until midnight)
Howlround
IOME
Mark Vernon
Pascal Savy & Hanzo Schwarz

Join us for an evening of wonder and excitement at IKLECTIK for a programme of audiovisual delights, premiering new collaborations and sonic experiments in abstract motion and storytelling with all ticket sales donated to a local homeless charity.

We are very pleased to welcome Glasow-based artist Mark Vernon for the official launch of his new LP soundtrack for the award-winning ‘Tape Letters from the Waiting Room’ directed by Steven McInerney, released on Psyché Tropes.

In sharp contrast to his more recent output, Howlround, who produce work entirely by manipulating naturally occurring sounds on magnetic tape, with all digital or artificial effects strictly forbidden, will unveil a new ambient work in progress using voice and tape only.

Electronic composer Pascal Savy and visual artist Hanzo Schwarz will present for the first time their new collaborative live film Signals inspired by the cosmic horror of H.P Lovecraft and the speculative hypotheses of the black hole era.

Premiering for the first time will be a new expanded audiovisual performance by multimedia artists Ben Kreukniet and Steven McInerney‘s collaborative project IOME. Their piece will use 16mm, digital projection and live electronics to explore the emergent phenomenon of trichromatic perception.

Astral Industries resident DJ Hems will offer a deep dive into fields of experimental, avant garde, far-out jazz and electronics throughout the evening.

The event will be streamed live from IKLECTIK on:
YouTube ch: https://youtu.be/XFmsbbHGHPI
IKLECTIK FB PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/IKLECTIK
IKLECTIK TWITCH channel: https://www.twitch.tv/iklectik

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Tape Letters from the Waiting Room – New LP Out Now

 

The expanded soundtrack to Steve McInerney’s award-winning Tape Letters from the Waiting Room is now available on vinyl. Mastered by Rashad Becker and pressed to heavyweight, this release comes with a 12-inch 16mm film strip of found footage.

You can purchase a copy of the record or download it here.

You can view the full film here.

I have a limited number of artist copies too so if you’d rather buy direct from me just drop me an email.

All tracks composed and recorded by Mark Vernon
Mastered by Rashad Becker
Lacquer cut by Ruy Mariné at Dubplates & Mastering
Artwork taken from the film by Steven McInerney

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.

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Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation – launch event

 

CALLING CARDS PUBLISHING PRESENTS:
MARK VERNON & LAURA PHILLIPS + MARY HURRELL + JOHN MACEDO
Cafe Oto, FRIDAY 27th AUGUST 2021, 7.30PM – Tickets £12, £10 (ADV), £6 members.

To mark the launch of the new LP on Calling Cards Publishing “Sonograph Sound Series Volume 2: Public & Domestic Plumbing & Sanitation” – Mark Vernon and Laura Phillips will plumb the depths to present an experiment in sound and image exploring the structures of sanitation systems, boilers, pumps, plumbing networks, drainage and water supplies.

The evening also welcomes Mary Hurrell, an interdisciplinary artist working across sound, performance, sculpture and text to explore choreography of the body. And John Macedo, whose work explores connections and relationships and revealing the hidden potential in all sounds, environments and technologies, often in intimate, immersive and intuitive ways.

More details here.

The next day Mark & Laura perform at the Bristol Exchange on a bill with Agathe Max, Ocean Floor and Wendy Miasma.

Early show, 10pm curfew – Tickets £6.
Exchange, 72 – 73 Old Market, Bristol.

More details here.

Tickets available here.

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Sheet Erosion on Kunstradio

 

A newly commissioned programme for Radiokunst – Kunstradio, Sunday 29th August, 23:00 – 0:00 (CET), Ö1, Austria.

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France. The piece is created from field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond and a batch of found open reel tape recordings from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel’s tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. In listening to the tapes it occurred to me that what we choose to record is actually a record of ourselves – our tastes, interests, emotional state or personality even. Each recording in isolation provides little in terms of clues but en masse a clearer picture begins to emerge and certain character traits start to become identifiable. Recorded with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV programmes – ambiguous activities in the background, babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping, chatter, etc. In the composed work family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space. Although the location remains the same would it be in any way recognisable to the inhabitants chronicled within it?

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Berliner Hörspiel Festival

My experimental radio play The Dominion of Din originally produced for the Amplify: Quarantine festival, has been shortlisted for the Burning Mic Prize for international non-German works at this year’s Berliner Hörspiel Festival – a radio play competition and 4-day extravaganza of listening sessions, Q & A’s, workshops and live radio plays. The winners are decided through a public vote.

Sunday, 14th August from 17:00 (CET) / 16:00 (GMT)

To tune in to the live stream or to view the full programme visit:

https://berliner-hoerspielfestival.de/festival-2021/

Update: I’m really happy to say that The Dominion of Din won first prize in Sunday’s competition against some pretty stiff competition.

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Clyde Built Radio Show – Calling Cards Publishing Special with Mark Vernon

·
In conversation with Calling Cards’ Sam Hailey-Watts, Glasgow’s Clyde Built Radio hosted an hour-long deep dive into some of my favourite sound effects records and field recordings works ahead of the forthcoming release on Calling Cards Publishing: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation.

Clyde Built Radio, 8am -9am, 23rd July.

(Track list below)

Mark Vernon – Draining Kitchen Sink
Sonograph Sound Effects Series Vol.2: Public & Domestic Plumbing & Sanitation (Calling Cards Publishing, CCP007, 2021)

Sound Effects Volume 16 – Rowing (hydrophone)
(Stereodisc, DFS 7056, 1974)

Andreas Oskar Hirsch – Row Out (excerpt)
Row LP (Makiphon 003, 2017)

Mark Vernon – Phacoemulsifier
Sonograph Sound Effects Series Vol.1: Sounds of the Modern Hospital (meagre resource, mere 025, 2014)

Mark Vernon – Hot Water Tap
Sonograph Sound Effects Series Vol.2: Public & Domestic Plumbing & Sanitation (Calling Cards Publishing, CCP007, 2021)

Mark Vernon – Plughole Drone – Steam Train Toilets
Sonograph Sound Effects Series Vol.2: Public & Domestic Plumbing & Sanitation (Calling Cards Publishing, CCP007, 2021)

Toshiya Tsunoda – Inside of a Pipe at the Seashore 1
Pieces of Air CD (Lucky Kitcken, LK 016, 2002)

R.S.King – Sink-Symphony
IWT / CIMES / IARC 1993 CD

Pigface – Symphony for Taps
Gub CD (Devotion, 1991)

Mark Vernon – Wash Basin Tap
Sonograph Sound Effects Series Vol.2: Public & Domestic Plumbing & Sanitation (Calling Cards Publishing, CCP007, 2021)

Mark Vernon – Paper Cone Music
(unreleased, 2012)

Bands 1 & 3 – Threshing and Cultivating by Steam Power LP
(Sounds of the Countryside series, Abbey 607, 1967)

Sven-Åke Johansson ‎– Konzert Für 12 Traktoren (excerpt)
Konzert Für 12 Traktoren LP (Trost Records, TR 137, 2015)

Sound Effects Volume 16 – Zilch
(Stereodisc, DFS 7056, 1974)

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In the Throat of the Machine – new digital release on Scatter

 
Liam Stefani’s Scatter Archive has released an album of works I composed from stereo and binaural recordings of two very unusual organs:

– a five-stop polyphone built by the John Compton organ company that was in the process of being restored. Recorded in the garage cum workshop of church organist Mark Latimer in Barrow in Furness in 2015.

– and ‘wind pipes’ a custom made organ built from over 100 salvaged church organ pipes by instrument inventor, Sarah Kenchington. Recorded at Trinity Apse, Edinburgh in 2013.

Name your price download here.

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