Talking Heads: Mark Peters

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by Ben Hogwood

Mark Peters has enjoyed a richly creative year. A key member of the band Engineers, he has seen his own solo work flourish for the Sonic Cathedral label. His 2018 album Innerland made a strong impression, and now it has a complementary work in this year’s release Red Sunset Dreams, creating sonic vistas from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Arcana sat down to talk about the new album, its sense of time and place, its guest musicians – and how Peters has sparked creatively from them. It is a record working on several levels – on one hand you could bask in its Mediterranean warmth, while on the other it creates vivid imagery of a British summer. “It’s probably no accident,” says Peters, “as a lot of it was done at the back end of last year in the UK, and some of the tracks – the title track and one called Tamaroa that was done quite quickly, were done just as Autumn started.” Music experiences a resurgence as the seasons change. “It’s funny”, he says. “I think my music definitely suits the autumn, and I feel you get more attuned to your rhythms as an artist. It has a lot to do with visual aspect, and how we naturally hunker down.”

Peters grew up in Wigan, where he still lives – and where he had his musical epiphany. “I think the key moment for me was in a science class, and someone played me a record which I don’t regard as the greatest record ever, The Delicate Sound of Thunder by Pink Floyd. It was so different to anything I knew. I was into pop music like every other kid, towards more indie music like Echo & The Bunnymen. It really struck me as a wow moment, where things changed. It was the combination of a frivolous band name and the stark, gloomy presentation – and how relatable the lyrics were, with me being at school and questioning everything! It was “Oh, right – I’m not alone.”

This gateway moment led to the purchase of a guitar. “Wigan was a really fertile area for music then, with a lot of crate-digging. I think a lot of that culture gets attributed with funk and soul, but I was listening to Can at the age of 16, and Aphrodite’s Child, the band Vangelis was in. The doors opened and it’s carried on ever since as a massive melting pot!”

Peters’ music has a strong sense of time and place – which can be said for Innerland as well as Red Sunset Dreams. Does he have an image in his head when writing music? “I don’t know, but I am a very visual person, and I get a lot out of imagery and the natural world. Just looking at the sky, it does have a massive influence on me and my mood. It motivates me to write, record and mix, which is a big part of it for me – for some people it’s a more prosaic part of the process. Rather than a particular image in my head I think it’s more of a feeling, and then I start to work on something.”

The feelings can be personal in other ways. “These days I start to think about a feeling that others may have had, an essence of something or things that I’ve read or seen historically. Those things have quite a big influence on me. I did a project with Ulrich Schnauss in response to local landmarks, and I really got into the research, looking at things locally and in more depth rather than the everyday person in the car. That’s honey to the bees for me for creativity, those black and white photographs and seeing how people had to live. I feel tuned into the essence in places, which is something I would like to do that again. I’ve explored and formulated that with Nat from Sonic Cathedral.”

Red Sunset Dreams is essentially an Americana instrumental album, presented naturally and without cliché. “It’s about the stuff in our innate consciousness. I enjoy the kitschy thing that we’ve kind of explored on the artwork. It should be fun, and I don’t want to be pompous but at the same time I started to think about it. When I found out there was a local cinema showing Westerns purely from the late industrial revolution, that was massively popular, and that was a really evocative situation. You’ve got all these people working in mills all the time, who couldn’t see the hills because of the smog. They were going into the cinema to experience this vastness and freedom that had once been there, a generation earlier when it was all farmlands. That clicked with me, and I realised it may have been the reason that all the aspects of Americana came into the country.”

Was there a particular place that appealed in America? “There was one particular day I used for a video for Switch On The Sky that sadly got lost in time, just around San Francisco. There was a particular day where we drove from just north of San Diego, a place called Del Mar, up alongside the Sierra Nevada mountains up to a place called Bishop. The reason I took the title Silver River was because it was filmed near there. We drove all day, with loads of ambient tracks on – Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, and some things like David Crosby, It was a really evocative day, and the light was amazing – the sunset seemed to last from late afternoon. It was a real actualization of all those things you experience on TV – the sizes of the curbs, the fire hydrants. That day really stuck with me and gave it a mythical quality that really appealed to me and was enchanting.” He really enjoyed San Francisco. “I think it’s got a good atmosphere. The real journey for us though started once we got on the road out of the we just stuck to the coast road through Big Sur and right the way down, which was astonishing – especially compared to Los Angeles, which we now know as ‘Hot Warrington’!

Silver River was made with legendary slide guitarist BJ Cole. “I’d like to have a better story about this, but he just has an online service! It’s ridiculously cheap, and you send him the tracks. We had a chat about who I was, and we had some people in common. Being from Wigan, I know the guys from The Verve, and he briefly joined the band in the late 1990s. He wasn’t on any recordings with them but is on Richard’s first solo album. We talked mainly about that, and that was it really – he’s a busy guy and still doing a lot of really cool stuff. He sent me a guide track, and we made him the lead instrument. I felt I should show a due amount of respect. He sent me six takes of improvisation, and as with all those some were successful and beautiful, and others you go a bit wrong. I edited it to keep all the good bits. When I heard it all together as a collage I was blown away – it was so fluid, with a watery feel, and when I found out the title it felt ideal.”

Peters’ other guest, Dot Allison, is also a natural fit. “I’ve been working with Nat from Sonic Cathedral for many years now, and I said it would be great to have a singer on this. I don’t want to make the same album as Innerland. He said, “If you could choose anyone, who would you go for?” I said Dot – and then some months later she heard Innerland and thought it would be a great idea. I think the reason why I wanted her to do it, aside from having the perfect vocal sound, was that I think it’s really important to choose people who are really going to get what you’re doing. I can’t think of anyone who would get it more! On our first conversation we talked about Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch, and I realised it would flow incredibly easily – and it did. She actually worked with BJ Cole herself, on a track called Tomorrow Never Comes, which is such a good song.

Sonic Cathedral is the ideal match for Peters’ music. “I’ve known Nat since Engineers played a couple of shows for him in 2005. We’ve been friends and in regular contact since then. I don’t know why it took so long to do stuff like this, I think it was because I was used to being on big labels like Echo and K-Scope. I was maybe a bit spoilt, maybe not having the right priorities, but as you get older you realise it’s all about the A&R really. I couldn’t think of a better home in terms of having someone who understands me and has ideas that mean I never have to worry about how things are presented. We have so many current interests, and share music naturally, and that sort of thing can be contrived at major labels. I’m really proud of him for sticking to his guns like he does. Trust is the key word with a label, and that’s exactly what we have.”

Peters’ work is much more solo-based these days, though he does have a little contact with his fellow-Engineers. “I am in touch with Dan MacBean on a pretty regular basis. We made an album in lockdown called Pictobug, which we released under the Engineers name. It was a great experience because although we did manage to do a lot of experimental stuff on those early Engineers albums, we always felt like a lot of our time was spent trying to try and please the label. I can’t complain – it wasn’t a horror story – but when you are signed to a larger label, they’ve got certain criteria you are bound to try and fulfil. We always felt that the untethered, exploratory aspects were left aside. For Dan and I to make that record was really good. It was four pieces ranging from 8 to 13 minutes, just jams that we did as an online release – and people were enjoying it. I haven’t generally seen others from the band apart from when we got our publishing back last year.”

With an open musical mind, Peters is still open to collaboration. “Some things just naturally occur, and sometimes the universe is just pointing at you – you don’t need to think too much. When we did the tracks that are on my album, Dot and I agreed it had happened so quickly and so well that we should do some more. We’ve done two more tracks, and I’ve got a few more ideas to send to her too. With the live band, that’s been really enjoyable – and we’ve started to do some improvisation-based stuff that I’d like to pick up a bit more and record. We’ve got the live sound honed so now we can see what they have to offer as composers, and let them have some creative input. That’s a start of a nice little project.”

You can browse Mark Peters’ music at his Bandcamp site – which includes this Christmassy EP from 2019:

On Record: Bamberger Symphoniker / Jakub Hrúša – Hans Rott: Symphony no.1 (Deutsche Grammophon)

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Rott Symphony [no.1] in E major (1878-80)
Mahler Andante allegretto in C major ‘Blumine’ (1884)
Bruckner Symphonic Prelude in C minor WAB297 (1876)

Bamberger Symphoniker / Jakub Hrúša

DG 486 2932 [70’11”]

Producers Sebastian Braun (Rott, Bruckner), Johannes Gleim (Mahler)
Engineers Markus Spatz (Rott), Christian Jaeger (Mahler), Thorsten Kuhn (Bruckner)

Recorded September and October 2021 (Rott), December 2021 (Mahler), March 2022 (Bruckner) at Joseph-Keilberth-Saal, Konzerthalle, Bamberg

reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Jakub Hrúša makes its debut on Deutsche Grammophon with a new account of the Symphony by Hans Rott (1858-84), whose belated premiere some 33 years ago prompted a reassessment (still ongoing) as to the evolution of this genre during those final decades of the 19th century.

What’s the music like?

Much time and space has been expended on the indebtedness (or otherwise) of Mahler to this work – elements from which can be found in at least five the younger composer’s symphonies – yet equally fascinating is the audible influence it had upon those who came before and after; hence the first movement from Bruckner’s Seventh and the second movement from Schmidt’s First – both of which are similarly grounded in E major). Without seeking to present it as an unalloyed masterpiece, Hrúša makes a persuasive case for a piece that Rott would doubtless have overhauled had his mental state not deteriorated soon after its completion. He finds the right balance between grandeur and introspection in the preludial Alle breve, as between that raptness which briefly though pointedly erupts into anguish in the Sehr langsam that follows.

The Scherzo is the most convincingly realized movement and Hrúša has the measure of its animated main theme with undertones of polka, broadening into the ländler-derived suavity of its trio before regaining its earlier vigour vis an ostinato-like impetus barely held in check – the accelerando not necessary in this instance. Nor does he disappoint in the finale. Much the longest movement, this is easily criticized for diffuseness but, as Hrúša makes plain, the formal ground-plan – prelude-chorale-fantasia-fugue-stretto-postlude – (such as the organist Rott likely extemporized before committing to paper) is readily perceivable and is invested with cumulative momentum sustained to the beatific concluding bars. That the composer so nearly brought off this ambitious conception is surely more significant than any shortcoming.

Couplings have been judiciously chosen to open-out the context of the main work. Included in early hearings of his First Symphony, Blumine is a remnant from Mahler’s early orchestral projects lost to history and Hrúša brings out those expressive ambiguities as offset the lilting trumpet melody. Once attributed to Mahler, Symphonic Prelude is now believed an exercise from Bruckner’s composition class and Hrúša, adhering to the original orchestration rather than that by Albrecht Gürsching, duly makes the most of its ominous and plaintive musings.

Does it all work?

It does. In his accompanying booklet observation, Hrúša reflects on the musical and historical relevance of Rott’s Symphony and there can be little doubt that, among the dozen or so other recordings of this piece, this is the most convincing in terms of all-round cohesion as also the excellence of the playing by the Bamberg Symphony (whose chief conductor Hrúša has been since 2018). A little too forwardly balanced in tuttis, sound otherwise reflects the excellence of the orchestra’s home-venue – Rott’s extensive use of triangle kept within sensible bounds.

Is it recommended?

It is. Those coming to the main work for the first time should certainly makes its latest release their first port-of-call, and it would be worthwhile DG continuing this association with Hrúša and the Bamberg in other mid-European music from the late Romantic and early Modern era.

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You can listen to clips and get purchase options from the Deutsche Grammophon website

Switched On – Various Artists, John Digweed & Miles Atmospheric – Quattro III (Bedrock)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Bedrock are an enterprising label, constantly rethinking how best to present their albums and compilations – and they always take a classy approach that puts the artist and the music first.

Quattro III is no exception. Put simply, it is four mixes from label head John Digweed that differ in tempo, beats and style – and as a substantial bonus, Ancestral Communication, a full artist album from DJ Miles Atmospheric.

The four mixes are given simple titles – Soundscape, Tempo, Breaks and Redux – and they can be listened to consecutively or as single units.

The brightly coloured package presents more than 50 exclusives, the result of Digweed’s inexhaustible search for new music and talent.

What’s the music like?

The mix titles are a good guide to how Quatro III proceeds, and over the four hours of John Digweed’s mixed material there is plenty to enjoy, however you slice and dice it.

Soundscape operates in an almost timeless void, performing an intensely calming meditation as it sets out a spacious sound picture. Wide-open canvases from the likes of DNA presents Charlie May, Circulation, Luke Chable and the excellent Davide Squillace present dreamy backdrops but also regenerate as part of a cleansing listening experience.

Tempo moves up to walking pace and starts to gain a strong sense of forward movement, realised throuh tracks like Dino Lenny’s Rocking To The Rhythm and Robert Babicz’s Afterlife, where the music is let off the leash. There are some lovely weightless textures here, though the increased percussion brings the music firmly towards the dancefloor, ending with the superb Thermal Drive from Speakwave.

Breaks presents what initially feels like a straightforward but strong mix, but as it progresses so there is more emotion introduced. The smoky vocal behind the Lexer Breaks mix of Quivver’s Nothin New To Feel is keenly felt, while Circulation’s Fruju has a breakdown to dive into. The music veers towards the minimal after this before the rolling beats gather towards a powerful finish.

Redux brings together a fine set of remixes, and really gets a shift on with the superb David Morales reworking of Pig & Dan’s Make You Go Higher. The inclusion of two tracks each from Captain Mustache and Aubrey Fry works a treat, Scan 7’s piano doodles matching the vocal of the latter’s Catch Me rather nicely.

As if the mixes weren’t enough, Miles Atmospheric’s album is a considerable bonus. There is an immediate temperature increase in these notes, fulfilling its brief from Digweed as a long player with ‘some quality warm deep ethereal techno that is a breath of fresh air’. Presented in a continuous mix of just over an hour, it includes the lush Tranquility, the fat bass lead of Mysterious Return To Forever then two extended treats in A Quiet Place For Distant Souls and the quicker Destination Lyra, showing how to make minimal source material go a very long way indeed.

Does it all work?

It does, because of the hours of thought and preparation that have gone into making the album. John Digweed’s famously meticulous working ethic comes up trumps again, but not at the expense of raw feeling.

Is it recommended?

With enthusiasm. Bedrock fans will lap it up – but each of the five musical canvases here works extremely well in the home listening environment too. Add the top quality presentation to the mix, whether on vinyl, CD or download, and Quattro III becomes a hugely desirable package.

Listen

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You can explore streaming and purchase options by clicking here, while you can visit the Bedrock shop for hard copies of the music on vinyl or CD

In appreciation – Terry Hall

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by Ben Hogwood

The world of music has been shocked by the news late last night that Terry Hall had died at the age of 63. Hall was singer and songwriter with three particularly influential bands – The Specials, Fun Boy Three and The Colourfield – but he also spread his wings to collaborate with a wide variety of musical figureheads.

Arcana has put together a playlist looking to cover a number of those sources, featuring some of his biggest hits with the bands above and several songwriting credits. Listening to the music brings a new sense of just how much of a mark Hall’s bands left on our cultural outlook.

Arcana’s best of 2022

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by Ben Hogwood

How has 2022 been for you? It has been a difficult year for so many, and I don’t know about you, but I find music takes on an even more important part of our lives when the going gets tough. This year we have been able to rely on a consistently strong line of releases, giving us extra resolve and relief from the day-to-day.

Arcana has reviewed a lot of music this year. What we tend to do on these pages is concentrate on music and artists that we know are likely to be good – and we assemble our thoughts on them so you can then make your own investigations. Classical music is usually our starting point, but from there we travel afar to the outer reaches of electronica, dance and contemporary music.

It was another strong year for electronic music of an ambient dimension. Switched On is the area of Arcana concentrating on new music in this area, and without putting too many musical names on these albums, we really enjoyed a good deal of slower stuff. Starting with a single instrument, Vanessa Wagner’s Study of the Invisible (above) made an understated but lasting impression, particularly with Caroline Shaw’s Gustave Le Grey at its heart. Vanessa plays with poise and expression, and this wonderfully curated selection worked so well.

Meanwhile long term favourite Erland Cooper charmed with his pure, still music written to soundtrack the Superbloom installation at the Tower Of London, Music For Growing Flowers (above). Speaking of earthy sounds, Sonic Cathedral gave us twilight wonders from Pye Corner Audio and, with a little more country in the mix, Sunset Dreams from Mark Peters.

At the hottest part of summer, Arthur King’s music was extremely evocative in Changing Landscapes – as was that of Deepchord, making a return to the long player from Detroit with Functional Designs. Steve Davis, meanwhile (yes, that Steve Davis!) was busy enhancing his reputation as part of the electronic trio Utopia Strong and their excellent album International Treasure

More studied electronica gems should also be shouted from the rooftops – we are lucky to have British artists of the calibre of Bibio, Gold Panda and Plaid, each returning with excellent new albums. Meanwhile Clarice Jensen took her cello as a starting point on new album Esthesis, making music of great colour and descriptive power to counter the onset of lockdown. Also facing the elements head-on was Daniel Avery, whose new album Ultra Truth was a powerful statement indeed:

There were some very strong releases on the classical side of things, as record companies dusted themselves down and started to include orchestral recordings again on their release schedules post-pandemic. Leading the way were the Sinfonia of London under John Wilson, a throwback to the golden age of orchestral recording in their challenging schedules for Chandos. With Hollywood, British and French music all covered, one in particular stood out, with the orchestral music of John Ireland given its rightful place in the spotlight:

Speaking of French music, a charmer from the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé proved the ideal hot weather soundtrack as it explored orchestral versions of Debussy keyboard works. Their accounts of the Petite Suite, La boîte à joujoux and Children’s Corner were full of colour and character.

This year saw the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of the finest British composers of the 20th century. Somm Recordings made a memorable tribute by way of the undervalued string quartets, these lovely autumnal works given vibrant performances from the Tippett Quartet.

Contemporary classical music put in some very strong appearances this year, and few more than Stuart Macrae, showing off the quality of his chamber music on an album from the Hebrides Ensemble on the excellent Delphian label. We enjoyed a number of online and in-person concerts from the English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods, which were capped by an outstanding recording of Adrian Williams’ Symphony no.1, a commendable raising of the flag for new British music

During 2022 we made a couple of visits to the outskirts of jazz, in the company of super group Flock – their excellent self titled debut – and a triumphant and experimental return from Szun Waves.

On the dancier side of things, Heavenly Recordings excelled themselves this year with no fewer than six collections of remixes! We loved the first two instalments, which acted as a prelude to the utterly essential third and fourth volumes which brought together remixes from the much missed Andrew Weatherall.

The Haçienda celebrated 40 years since its inception with a handsome package from Cherry Red, while the best DJ mix honour goes to Cinthie – her contribution to !K7’s DJ Kicks mix series really was a thing of pure dancefloor enjoyment. So, too, was a John Morales-edited compilation devoted to the art of Teddy Pendergrass, vocalist for Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes.

Cultured music for the discerning dancefloor came our way from Au Suisse, a welcome reunion for Morgan Geist and Kelley Polar, and also from Hot Chip, who further explored their emotions with an excellent and heartfelt eighth album. Moderat, returning after a long absence, went more for the jugular with the thrilling More D4ta

With all that said and done, what would an Arcana album of the year look like? Something like this…the most listened to long player of the year in these parts, Fleeting Future – a vibrant offering from Akusmi which channelled all sorts of intriguing influences into something wonderfully original:

We will have a few more reviews to come over this week – but for now, we thank all our readers for your visits and wish you a happy, peaceful and regenerative Christmas holiday season. Oh, and a Happy New Year for 2023!