-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Mark Van Hoen
ALBUM...: Nightvision
GENRE...: Electronic
STYLE...: Ambient, IDM, Experimental, Downtempo, Ambient Pop, Indietronica
YEAR....: 2015
LABEL...: Saint Marie Records
CURRENT.: USA
PLACE...: Los Angeles, CA
BORN....: September 1966, Croydon, Greater London, UK
ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V0
BITRATE.: 255 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 10
SIZE....: 78.41 MB
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/markvanhoen1
- TRACKLIST
1 All For You 4:09
2 Froese Requiem I 3:44
3 Froese Requiem II 4:31
4 Socrates' Books 4:36
5 Bring It Back 3:28
6 The Night Sky 2:39
7 Kojiki 5:58
8 I Love To Fly 4:48
9 A Wish 3:44
10 Sensing The Close 4:49
Total Playtime: 42:26
Mark Van Hoen is a British electronic music artist of Indian-Jamaican
descent. He has released under his own name as well as Locust. Pitchfork
said, "Musically, Van Hoen belongs to a distinguished family tree. Originally
influenced by the likes of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream, and later presaging
both Autechre's glitch and Boards of Canada's pastoral IDM."
*
Nightvision is Mark Van Hoen's first album under his birth name since the
preceding The Revenant Diary in 2012 -- the producer issued You'll Be Safe
Forever (2013) and After the Rain (2014) as Locust. During that time, Van
Hoen was involved with Children of the Stones and Black Hearted Brother,
rather disparate and more collaborative projects that likewise yielded
albums. On Nightvision, there's a well-defined connection to the
free-floating ambient Krautrock that informed all of After the Rain, but Van
Hoen also puts new twists on his frost-coated beats. He pays tribute to
Tangerine Dream leader and electronic music pioneer Edgar Froese (who died in
early 2015) with a two-part, eight-minute requiem that recalls certain
aspects of the electronic music pioneer's discography while still sounding
like a Van Hoen creation. "Socrates' Books" and "I Love to Fly," vaguely
tranquilizing and terrifying at the same time, along with the beat-less "The
Night Sky," are also up there with Van Hoen's best. He still hasn't made a
poor or even middling album.
*
It doesn't take a lot of musical knowledge or technical terms in your head to
have heard music been referred to as created by composers before, but I truly
feel as if Mark Van Hoen takes the term "composer" to a whole new level.
Every song is, essentially, composed by someone but not every song is
composed in this way. It's the difference in food between a master chef and
me with my microwave. It's the difference in art between Van Gogh and me
with finger paints. You get the idea. I understand that "composer" can
refer to just about anyone but it's all I can think of with the music of Mark
Van Hoen.
Through spatial tones and electronic strings, "Nightvision" has a quality to
it which reminds me of a symphony. It doesn't feel like a combining of
instruments to form a song but rather the way you picture a symphony playing.
Why does it feel different for an ensemble of fifty playing various
instruments over three or four guys playing a drum kit and guitars I'm not
sure but it just does and "Nightvision" has that bigger construction feel to
it. You can hear a flute and you can hear crashes right up until it sounds
like something out of "The Twilight Zone" or "The X-Files" in that eerie sort
of way. Static also takes us into that John Carpenter "Halloween" theme
type of feel but it mixes in with beats to take it to another level entirely.
This is what I'm trying to tell you here: what you think you're hearing based
on what you've heard before is on one level but Mark Van Hoen is taking it
somewhere uncharted.
Distorted beats make an appearance in this electronic symphony with sort of
pianos. Even though some other form of electronic type of vocals might seem
to be coming out within these songs, on the eighth track, "I Love To Fly",
you will eventually hear spoken word over beats and the such and it just
comes out so well. It is what I imagine the modern Beats would sound like
if only people cared enough about poetry anymore to decide to go down that
path. As the title of the song suggests, the words have a lot to do with
flying and at one point even state "The only bad part about flying is having
to come back down". That could be interpreted any number of ways, but I'm
going to go with the moral high ground here and think of it as the rush an
artist might get from performing music live in front of other people who are
equally into it.
Calling Mark Van Hoen a "composer" seems like an insult as nearly everyone
who makes music can be considered one and he is just in a completely
different space than everyone else. So while anyone who makes music can be
a composer, technically, I would have to consider Mark Van Hoen a master
composer based upon his talents which can be heard in the electronic
wonderland known as "Nightvision". I'll leave you to draw the comparisons
to this album with the title yourself, in the sense that most people see in
the light but the music on here is like being able to see in the dark. I'm
not going to get into the whole nocturnal creature idea (is this CD
raccoons?) but just keep that title in mind as you experience this work of
beauty.
*
Electronic music is often judged on the breakthroughs reliably brought to the
turntable by fresh voices. Although focusing on newcomers is surely
understandable, the worthwhile contributions of veterans shouldn't be
misplaced, and the latest release from UK born and current Los Angelino Mark
Van Hoen is an excellent example. Nightvision finds the longstanding solo
artist and deft collaborator exploring familiar territory and avoiding
redundancy; it's out November 13 on LP/CD/digital via the Saint Marie label.
Prominent on Mark Van Hoen's rΘsumΘ is his series of recordings as Locust,
the tally accruing a mess of EPs and a half-dozen full-lengths beginning with
1994's Weathered Well on the R&S Records ambient subsidiary Apollo. After the
following year's Truth is Born of Arguments and '97's Morning Light, Locust
shifted to the Touch imprint for '01's Wrong, a pair of CDs intended to be
played simultaneously.
Locust then undertook a long hiatus as Van Hoen remained highly active. In
fact the output under his own name actually spans back to '97's The Last
Flowers of the Darkness on Touch and prior to that '94's Aurobindo:
Involution, a duo work with his Seafeel/Scala colleague Daren Seymour issued
on Ash international.
Alongside extensive production credits additional creative partnerships have
accumulated; early on there was the trio Autocreation in cahoots with Tara
Patterson and Kevin Hector, their album Mettle hitting racks in '94 through
Inter-Modo, a fleeting imprint run by the Orb's Alex Paterson. More recently
Black Hearted Brother, Van Hoen's duo with Slowdive/Mojave 3 guitarist Neil
Halstead has emerged, releasing Stars Are Our Home through Sonic Cathedral
Records.
Van Hoen's arrival in the mid-'90s may have heralded him as a new name, but
he'd already been recording for a decade; Locust's '94 In Remembrance of
Times Past collected '80s material, and so did The Worcester Tapes,
1983-1987, a limited edition cassette appearing under the Van Hoen moniker
earlier this year on the Tapeworm label.
This ten-year period of activity is no shock, but far less likely is Van
Hoen's continued relevance in a field not especially known for fostering
longevity. Part of the reason can perhaps be attributed to his loose
allegiance to genre; unlike those scoring a big plunge into more rigidly
outlined (or even faddish) waters, he's evaded getting stylistically boxed in
or for that matter tactically constrained; the early Locust stuff relied more
on programming and sequencing, and After the Rain, the project's '13 effort
on Editions Mego derives from live playing in collab with Louis Sherman and a
handful of singers.
Van Hoen's not averse to beats but he's also not accurately assessed as a
dance guy. He leans instead into experimental, abstract, drone, and ambient
territory, making his oeuvre well-suited for the home environment. Listing
the expected influences of Brian Eno and Kraftwerk and sprinkling in the
welcome but unsurprising additive of Steve Reich and less frequently cited
precedent of David Sylvian, he later enthused over the inspiration triggered
by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
That last name can imply a certain avant-severity, though extremes are not
generally Van Hoen's bag. While the layered vocal repetition of "Holy Me,"
the final nine and a half minute track from his '12 Editions Mego LP The
Revenant Diary did tangle with the fringes, nothing on Nightvision travels so
far into the aural deep-weeds, the disc's opener "All for You" utilizing
gradually unfolding and slow-drifting keyboard patterns and minimal rhythmic
undercurrents to produce an atmosphere fairly tagged as retro-futuristic as
it lacks any palpable throwback irony.
It's a bit like a blend of two professed Van Hoen faves, namely Cabaret
Voltaire and Tangerine Dream, with the latter signifying a recurring
cinematic quality. To wit, during "Froese Requiem I" the big beat promotes
action, the keyboards instill dramatic tension, and the short spurts of tech
suggest a potentially malicious robot lingering somewhere in the narrative.
As the cut develops it manages to bring to mind Riley, '70s electronic
pioneer Laurie Spiegel and even snippets of the unearthed private-press New
Age excursions chronicled on the recent box set I Am the Center. There are
indeed a bunch of reference points in this review, but Nightvision exudes
cohesion characteristic of a veteran musician, Mark Van Hoen in firm command
of his significant talent as others have exited the scene.
https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2015/11/graded-on-a-curve-mark-van-hoen-nightvision/
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
---==--==---