Apr. 06, 2011 - Issue #807: Spring Style

Magnetic heart

Mark Templeton's new release constructed in analogue

Mark Templeton's latest EP—the limited-to-100 cassettes Scotch Heart—plays like a memory. Fading in and out above tape clicks and mechanical groans are faraway samples, haloing into the background and proceeding into the foreground, a mix of breathy choral singing and moments of tortured singing pummeled into spacey waves that wash through speakers.


Its creation was largely the result of chance—not only in the materials but in their constructive process. Offered the opportunity to release a tape by Iowa-based label Sweat Lodge Guru, Templeton explored magnetic tape as creative building blocks, utilizing reel-to-reels his parents had purchased at a garage sale, manipulating the reel-to-reel player, adding found sounds and field recordings he'd made onto cassettes and then adding instruments where they were needed.

"There is a large element of chance because you're kind of discovering," he says of the process. "You have the clay there and you're using your tools to mould and shape the clay but a lot of times the finished piece gets thrown out. It's the same with a track, you're just using the sounds that are available and you're trying to deconstruct them and mould them and shape them into a new identity. For me I'm trying to make that process less lengthy, so I'm trying to be very intentional and there's still discovery and exploration but there's also a really strong intention as to what I want to hear and the way I want the piece to shape."

With the release of Scotch Heart, Templeton will have had his music released in every format available, which is something that drew him to the project in the first place.
"This kind of completes the formats for me: I've had music released digitally, CD, DVD, vinyl and now cassette, so I wanted to go full circle," he says. "Now if they could only bring back eight-tracks I'd have another format I'd get to release my music on."

The decision to limit the amount of tapes available to 100 was an easy one for Templeton: not only does it not make sense to print thousands of copies of an esoteric EP from a financial standpoint, limiting the release recreates a mystery around music that Templeton feels has been lost.
"I just think that in today's day and age a lot of the mystery of music is taken away by the Internet," he says. "I mean, I'm super grateful that the Internet exists because it's provided me a lot of opportunities but I like the idea that once something's gone it's gone and for those who can't hear it there's a mystery about what that sounds like and what that experience is like." V

Sat, Apr 9 (8:30 pm)
Mark Templeton
With Smokey, Zweitag
Artery, $8 (advance), $10 (door) vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus