DCD – 39:47/39:54
The album, Mark Van Hoen’s second for Touch after “The Last Flowers from the Darkness” [TO:31, 1997], features Holli Ashton on lead vocals, and various backing vocalists including Lisa Millet, Tara Patterson (Autocreation), Sarah Peacock (Scala, Seefeel, January) and 4AD artist Vinny Miller. The instrumentation is purely electronic analog synthesizers, edited and manipulated in Digidesigns’ Protools. Mark Van Hoen, who programmed and produced the LP, wanted to invoke some of the spirit of late 70’s British electronic music, combining that sound with his now familiar brand of electronics for which he became known during the 90’s.
The fragility and unpredictability of vocalist Holli Ashton’s personality and vocals, combined with the decayed and warped quality of the sound offer a warmth rarely found in such pure electronic music. Imperfections are the source of that warmth and there are several connections here between the late 70’s (the period which first inspired Mark to make music) and the last few years. Electronic music in the late 70’s was forced to become more inventive because the limitations of the instruments of the time needed the musician to craft each sound by hand, and the instruments often went wrong; out of time and out of tune. These same instruments were used on this album; there are no samplers, guitars or anything else but analog synthesizers and vocals on this recording. More recently, artists such as Ryoji Ikeda, Pan Sonic, and Hazard have sought to bring out imperfections in digital music, and those influences are here, too. Even the second CD, to be played simultaneously with the first is a ‘misuse’ of technology, yet it makes a beautiful sound.
Sometimes things just don’t work out right…
In the Spring of 1998 Mark Van Hoen AKA Locust had just finished exhaustively promoting the critically acclaimed ‘Morning Light’ album. This hitherto much lauded, yet underground electronica artist was about to break into the mainstream. But then things went wrong. The usual story of falling out with an independent label which was eventually resolved with Mark’s liberation.
During this difficult time Mark recorded ‘Wrong’ – an album of songs with Holli Ashton, the dominant vocalist featured on Morning Light. Like so many artists before him, through his plight, Mark became all the more driven to produce a work that would meet his objective of being both commercial and also innovative. Summing up this frustrating period of enforced silence, the aptly titled Wrong, finally sees the light of day on Touch.
Track list:
CDOne
1. Heal
2. Make A Difference
3. Believe In The One
4. Sweet Sky
5. What Do You Care?
6. Separate
7. Wrong
8. Impossible Adventure
9. Haze
CDTwo
1. Presence And Gifts
2. Create, Dissolve And Recreate
3. Faith Grows From Trees
4. Distopian
5. Strings That Bind Or Drop
6. Playing With Time
7. Night Navigation
8. Candle Wishes
9. Conversations Beyond The End Of The Sky