Browse by Artist: VAN HOEN, MARK

Artist:	VAN HOEN, MARK
Title:	Where Is The Truth
Label:	CITY CENTRE OFFICES (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	CCO 046CD

Mark Van Hoen bought his first synthesizer and tape recorder in 1981, and immediately began making electronic music with influences from Brian Eno and Cabaret Voltaire. Most recordings were made at his home studio, but others were made at the radio stations he worked at during the '80s. As a contemporary of Aphex Twin, he was signed in 1993 on R&S Records as Locust. Listening to what he's done in the past over various labels from R&S, Touch, 4AD and now City Centre Offices, it's clear that it's time for Van Hoen's music to be up for critical reappraisal. He is a greatly admired and influential composer and performer that has inspired many other musicians. Recorded in London UK and Brooklyn, USA and finished in his recording studio in Woodstock, New York, this album is more than just a mere collection of tracks. A life-changing discovery and enlightenment is expressed in this rich, dense and emotive album. While working through the red tape involved in emigrating from the UK to the USA, he discovered quite by chance that his identity and childhood family life contained the dark secret of a covered up adoption. His life-long sense of displacement started to make sense and the cathartic voyage that ensued is explored in this album. More collaborative than his previous solo works, Where Is The Truth includes contributions from other musicians including Neil Halstead (Slowdive, Mojave 3) and Julia Frodahl (Edison Woods). Reliant not only on Mark's familiar brooding electronic tones, it features more electro-acoustic sounds than in previous releases. Interestingly, this album also consolidates many of the styles and sounds Mark has explored on previous albums, as a solo artist, collaborator and producer. Where Is The Truth sees Mark Van Hoen entering a new phase.

Artist:	VAN HOEN, MARK
Title:	Where Is The Truth
Label:	CITY CENTRE OFFICES (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	CCO 046LP

LP version. Mark Van Hoen bought his first synthesizer and tape recorder in 1981, and immediately began making electronic music with influences from Brian Eno and Cabaret Voltaire. Most recordings were made at his home studio, but others were made at the radio stations he worked at during the '80s. As a contemporary of Aphex Twin, he was signed in 1993 on R&S Records as Locust. Listening to what he's done in the past over various labels from R&S, Touch, 4AD and now City Centre Offices, it's clear that it's time for Van Hoen's music to be up for critical reappraisal. He is a greatly admired and influential composer and performer that has inspired many other musicians. Recorded in London UK and Brooklyn, USA and finished in his recording studio in Woodstock, New York, this album is more than just a mere collection of tracks. A life-changing discovery and enlightenment is expressed in this rich, dense and emotive album. While working through the red tape involved in emigrating from the UK to the USA, he discovered quite by chance that his identity and childhood family life contained the dark secret of a covered up adoption. His life-long sense of displacement started to make sense and the cathartic voyage that ensued is explored in this album. More collaborative than his previous solo works, Where Is The Truth includes contributions from other musicians including Neil Halstead (Slowdive, Mojave 3) and Julia Frodahl (Edison Woods). Reliant not only on Mark's familiar brooding electronic tones, it features more electro-acoustic sounds than in previous releases. Interestingly, this album also consolidates many of the styles and sounds Mark has explored on previous albums, as a solo artist, collaborator and producer. Where Is The Truth sees Mark Van Hoen entering a new phase.

Artist:	VAN HOEN, MARK
Title:	The Revenant Diary
Label:	EDITIONS MEGO (AUSTRIA)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	EMEGO 136CD

"Don't look back," repeats one of several voices within Mark Van Hoen's The Revenant Diary, his fifth solo album and first release on Editions Mego. Surrounded by weighted beats, analog synthesizer drones and granular dirt, the unidentified, siren-like female voice's advice is as much seduction as warning. Tellingly so, for as well as being both Van Hoen's most ambitious and his most accessible work, The Revenant Diary is an eloquent meditation on the allures and dangers of memory, regret and nostalgia. The album's foundation was shaped by a memory and a chance encounter. While remastering some of his early '90s releases and Peel Session tracks, Van Hoen -- a founding member of Seefeel, who also worked as Locust and in Seefeel offshoot Scala and has collaborated with Slowdive, Robert Fripp, Edison Woods and Esben And The Witch, amongst others -- happened upon a track he had recorded in 1982. Attracted by its simplicity, he was inspired to record the basis of The Revenant Diary on 4-track tape, using a minimal set-up, reminiscent of his first early '80s musical adventures as a young teenager. The recollection of one of these -- a 13 year-old Van Hoen's experiment in reel-to-reel tape recording of an ineffectual pop song playing on the radio, which spuriously transformed it into a spooky amalgam of backwards church organ and unintelligible voices -- provided an evocative inspiration. The Revenant Diary pivots on this combination of complex reflection and simplified technology. A determinedly analog affair, it brims over with Van Hoen's signature sounds: immersively-decayed drones, almost broken ambient surfaces and lulling rhythms, with granular crackle providing spectral grit. Fragments of female vocals pepper the album, and notably dominate the 10-minute epic "Holy Me," one of Van Hoen's most complex compositions, in which non-verbal sounds rub delicately against each other in an otherworldly choral composition. Less song-based than his last solo work, the well-received Where Is The Truth (CCO 046CD/LP), its palette and structure are more descendants of the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments, which utilized a similar combination of decayed atmosphere against a granular/glitch rhythmic structure. Tracks like "Laughing Stars At Night" and "Unknown Host" exude a powerful emotional undertow, as alluringly woozy as they are intensely contemplative. But this is no exercise in Instagram-style disposable nostalgia. Van Hoen's adroit juxtapositions of gauzy textures evoke the blurred luminescence of 16mm film and the rich, color-saturated hues of rediscovered Polaroid photos, as the cover artwork, designed by Stephen O'Malley, acknowledges. The Revenant Diary expertly renders displaced memory daze in lushly melodic, gently delirious electronic sound. All titles composed by Mark Van Hoen. Recorded in Brooklyn & Woodstock, NY, 2011. All instruments & processing by Mark Van Hoen with additional vocals by Georgia Belmont.

Artist:	VAN HOEN, MARK
Title:	The Revenant Diary
Label:	EDITIONS MEGO (AUSTRIA)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$27.50
Catalog #:	EMEGO 136LP

2LP version. "Don't look back," repeats one of several voices within Mark Van Hoen's The Revenant Diary, his fifth solo album and first release on Editions Mego. Surrounded by weighted beats, analog synthesizer drones and granular dirt, the unidentified, siren-like female voice's advice is as much seduction as warning. Tellingly so, for as well as being both Van Hoen's most ambitious and his most accessible work, The Revenant Diary is an eloquent meditation on the allures and dangers of memory, regret and nostalgia. The album's foundation was shaped by a memory and a chance encounter. While remastering some of his early '90s releases and Peel Session tracks, Van Hoen -- a founding member of Seefeel, who also worked as Locust and in Seefeel offshoot Scala and has collaborated with Slowdive, Robert Fripp, Edison Woods and Esben And The Witch, amongst others -- happened upon a track he had recorded in 1982. Attracted by its simplicity, he was inspired to record the basis of The Revenant Diary on 4-track tape, using a minimal set-up, reminiscent of his first early '80s musical adventures as a young teenager. The recollection of one of these -- a 13 year-old Van Hoen's experiment in reel-to-reel tape recording of an ineffectual pop song playing on the radio, which spuriously transformed it into a spooky amalgam of backwards church organ and unintelligible voices -- provided an evocative inspiration. The Revenant Diary pivots on this combination of complex reflection and simplified technology. A determinedly analog affair, it brims over with Van Hoen's signature sounds: immersively-decayed drones, almost broken ambient surfaces and lulling rhythms, with granular crackle providing spectral grit. Fragments of female vocals pepper the album, and notably dominate the 10-minute epic "Holy Me," one of Van Hoen's most complex compositions, in which non-verbal sounds rub delicately against each other in an otherworldly choral composition. Less song-based than his last solo work, the well-received Where Is The Truth (CCO 046CD/LP), its palette and structure are more descendants of the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments, which utilized a similar combination of decayed atmosphere against a granular/glitch rhythmic structure. Tracks like "Laughing Stars At Night" and "Unknown Host" exude a powerful emotional undertow, as alluringly woozy as they are intensely contemplative. But this is no exercise in Instagram-style disposable nostalgia. Van Hoen's adroit juxtapositions of gauzy textures evoke the blurred luminescence of 16mm film and the rich, color-saturated hues of rediscovered Polaroid photos, as the cover artwork, designed by Stephen O'Malley, acknowledges. The Revenant Diary expertly renders displaced memory daze in lushly melodic, gently delirious electronic sound. All titles composed by Mark Van Hoen. Recorded in Brooklyn & Woodstock, NY, 2011. All instruments & processing by Mark Van Hoen with additional vocals by Georgia Belmont. Housed in a deluxe full-color gatefold sleeve with spot-varnished design. The second LP is one-sided.

Previous Page Index of Artists Next Page