“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” 
(Don Draper, Mad Men)

Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slideshow of the mind’s eye - projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listeners’ mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism.

Each episode is based on a found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the 60s and 70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from my own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that I have collected over the past twenty years.

Using these found slideshow commentaries as a framework, a series of musical soundscapes have been created to bring the absent images to life, activating the listeners’ imagination in the classic tradition of ‘cinema for the ears’. It’s a little like looking through a family photo album where only the hand written captions and mounting corners remain; the photographs themselves have all been removed. The evocative rattle and clack of the projector shuffles through different slides as the fragile voices of our tour guides accompany us on a sonic journey that fractures time - and through the cracks, the past bleeds through into our present.

'Call Back Carousel' LP - selected tracks (Discrepant, 2023)

Audio Archaeology Series Volume 3: Brest

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France.

The piece is comprised of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel’s tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations.

In the composition family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space.

Sound Art, Radio Art, Field Recording, Found Sound, Musique Concrete, Electroacoustic, Experimental, Soundscape, Radiophonic

'Sheet Erosion' CD - selected tracks (Sonoris, 2023)

'The Dramaturgy of Decay' LP - selected tracks (Futura Resistenza, 2024)

'Unforced Errors' tape - selected tracks (Vice de Forme, 2025)

A track from the 2021 CD 'Magneto Mori: Vienna' on Canti Magnetici.

Magneto Mori: Vienna

Strips Of Time Cut To Size

Better Never Than Late

The Periphery Defines The Centre

Non - Existent Days

Manually draining the unit. Internal drain perspective. Rhythmically modulated throaty squelch underscored by electronic drone concluding with burbly squelches.

From the new LP - 'Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 2: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation' (CCP007)

BUY NOW: callingcardspublishing.bandcamp.com/album/s…itation

Mark Vernon presents the second volume of his Sonograph Sound Effects Series – the follow up to the unexpectedly popular ‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital’ LP. This time the focus is on sounds of plumbing and sanitation: drainpipes, plugholes, leaks, squeaky taps and cisterns.

Vernon has recorded many of the sounds from unusual perspectives, in extreme close-up scenarios, using contact mics or small binaural microphones to get into tiny inaccessible spaces. There is also a particular focus on plumbing on-board vehicles and vessels in motion. The intention here is to reveal the marvellous within the most mundane and every day of sounds.

The record masquerades as a collection of generic archetypal sounds whilst in actuality it revels in the specific and unique – some of the most idiosyncratic and characterful instances of such sounds. No two gurgles are alike.

As an avid collector of sound effects records these obsolete discs have gradually taken on new meaning for Vernon as unintended audio time capsules. As their use value has decreased their value as historical audio documents has grown. To produce a sound effects LP in the age of digital audio libraries is an anachronistic gesture intended to elevate what purports to be a generic collection of recordings intended for functional use to the level of an artwork.

The album is in part a homage to classic ranges of sound effects albums such as the BBC Sound Effects Library - even down to the utilitarian design and functional descriptions of the sounds (a key aspect of this release). Such generic collections of sounds were intended to fulfil the needs of professional and amateur broadcasters, filmmakers and theatre producers. However, through careful selection and sequencing it is also intended that this record works as a linear sound composition.

>>> Utilitarian unsounds for undisclosed purposes <<<

All Recordings made by Mark Vernon
Sleeve Design and Artwork by Marc Baines

Dishwasher Drainage - Hobart ECO –MAX CLF26 Dish Sanitiser

Grinding groans at different pitches generated by position of the tap during waterflow.

From the new LP - 'Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 2: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation' (CCP007)

BUY NOW: https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/sonograph-sound-effects-series-volume-2-public-and-domestic-plumbing-and-sanitation

Mark Vernon presents the second volume of his Sonograph Sound Effects Series – the follow up to the unexpectedly popular ‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital’ LP. This time the focus is on sounds of plumbing and sanitation: drainpipes, plugholes, leaks, squeaky taps and cisterns.

Vernon has recorded many of the sounds from unusual perspectives, in extreme close-up scenarios, using contact mics or small binaural microphones to get into tiny inaccessible spaces. There is also a particular focus on plumbing on-board vehicles and vessels in motion. The intention here is to reveal the marvellous within the most mundane and every day of sounds.

The record masquerades as a collection of generic archetypal sounds whilst in actuality it revels in the specific and unique – some of the most idiosyncratic and characterful instances of such sounds. No two gurgles are alike.

As an avid collector of sound effects records these obsolete discs have gradually taken on new meaning for Vernon as unintended audio time capsules. As their use value has decreased their value as historical audio documents has grown. To produce a sound effects LP in the age of digital audio libraries is an anachronistic gesture intended to elevate what purports to be a generic collection of recordings intended for functional use to the level of an artwork.

The album is in part a homage to classic ranges of sound effects albums such as the BBC Sound Effects Library - even down to the utilitarian design and functional descriptions of the sounds (a key aspect of this release). Such generic collections of sounds were intended to fulfil the needs of professional and amateur broadcasters, filmmakers and theatre producers. However, through careful selection and sequencing it is also intended that this record works as a linear sound composition.

>>> Utilitarian unsounds for undisclosed purposes <<<

All Recordings made by Mark Vernon
Sleeve Design and Artwork by Marc Baines

Hot Water Tap - Ceramic washbasin

With the tap open, water glugs in steadily ascending pitch as air bubbles rise to the surface.

From the new LP - 'Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 2: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation' (CCP007)

BUY NOW: callingcardspublishing.bandcamp.com/album/s…itation

Mark Vernon presents the second volume of his Sonograph Sound Effects Series – the follow up to the unexpectedly popular ‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital’ LP. This time the focus is on sounds of plumbing and sanitation: drainpipes, plugholes, leaks, squeaky taps and cisterns.

Vernon has recorded many of the sounds from unusual perspectives, in extreme close-up scenarios, using contact mics or small binaural microphones to get into tiny inaccessible spaces. There is also a particular focus on plumbing on-board vehicles and vessels in motion. The intention here is to reveal the marvellous within the most mundane and every day of sounds.

The record masquerades as a collection of generic archetypal sounds whilst in actuality it revels in the specific and unique – some of the most idiosyncratic and characterful instances of such sounds. No two gurgles are alike.

As an avid collector of sound effects records these obsolete discs have gradually taken on new meaning for Vernon as unintended audio time capsules. As their use value has decreased their value as historical audio documents has grown. To produce a sound effects LP in the age of digital audio libraries is an anachronistic gesture intended to elevate what purports to be a generic collection of recordings intended for functional use to the level of an artwork.

The album is in part a homage to classic ranges of sound effects albums such as the BBC Sound Effects Library - even down to the utilitarian design and functional descriptions of the sounds (a key aspect of this release). Such generic collections of sounds were intended to fulfil the needs of professional and amateur broadcasters, filmmakers and theatre producers. However, through careful selection and sequencing it is also intended that this record works as a linear sound composition.

>>> Utilitarian unsounds for undisclosed purposes <<<

All Recordings made by Mark Vernon with the exception of this one - recorded by Tian Miller.

Sleeve Design and Artwork by Marc Baines

Water Container - 15 litre plastic camping water container

The wastepipe of the washbasin naturally filters the sounds from the exterior including the train’s undercarriage. As water flows down the plughole the pitch of this filtering effect is subject to subtle alterations. Recorded on the 'Jacobite' steam train from Mallaig to Fort William.

From the new LP - 'Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 2: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation' (CCP007)

BUY NOW: callingcardspublishing.bandcamp.com/album/s…itation

Mark Vernon presents the second volume of his Sonograph Sound Effects Series – the follow up to the unexpectedly popular ‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital’ LP. This time the focus is on sounds of plumbing and sanitation: drainpipes, plugholes, leaks, squeaky taps and cisterns.

Vernon has recorded many of the sounds from unusual perspectives, in extreme close-up scenarios, using contact mics or small binaural microphones to get into tiny inaccessible spaces. There is also a particular focus on plumbing on-board vehicles and vessels in motion. The intention here is to reveal the marvellous within the most mundane and every day of sounds.

The record masquerades as a collection of generic archetypal sounds whilst in actuality it revels in the specific and unique – some of the most idiosyncratic and characterful instances of such sounds. No two gurgles are alike.

As an avid collector of sound effects records these obsolete discs have gradually taken on new meaning for Vernon as unintended audio time capsules. As their use value has decreased their value as historical audio documents has grown. To produce a sound effects LP in the age of digital audio libraries is an anachronistic gesture intended to elevate what purports to be a generic collection of recordings intended for functional use to the level of an artwork.

The album is in part a homage to classic ranges of sound effects albums such as the BBC Sound Effects Library - even down to the utilitarian design and functional descriptions of the sounds (a key aspect of this release). Such generic collections of sounds were intended to fulfil the needs of professional and amateur broadcasters, filmmakers and theatre producers. However, through careful selection and sequencing it is also intended that this record works as a linear sound composition.

>>> Utilitarian unsounds for undisclosed purposes <<<

All Recordings made by Mark Vernon
Sleeve Design and Artwork by Marc Baines

Plughole Drone - Steam Train Toilets

Recorded with a stereo microphone inserted into the mouth of a metal drainpipe following a downpour of rain. Rhythmic staccato drips with tight echo. At some points the percussive hits are reminiscent of a typewriter. Passing traffic audible in background.

From the new LP - 'Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 2: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation' (CCP007)

BUY NOW: callingcardspublishing.bandcamp.com/album/s…itation

Mark Vernon presents the second volume of his Sonograph Sound Effects Series – the follow up to the unexpectedly popular ‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital’ LP. This time the focus is on sounds of plumbing and sanitation: drainpipes, plugholes, leaks, squeaky taps and cisterns.

Vernon has recorded many of the sounds from unusual perspectives, in extreme close-up scenarios, using contact mics or small binaural microphones to get into tiny inaccessible spaces. There is also a particular focus on plumbing on-board vehicles and vessels in motion. The intention here is to reveal the marvellous within the most mundane and every day of sounds.

The record masquerades as a collection of generic archetypal sounds whilst in actuality it revels in the specific and unique – some of the most idiosyncratic and characterful instances of such sounds. No two gurgles are alike.

As an avid collector of sound effects records these obsolete discs have gradually taken on new meaning for Vernon as unintended audio time capsules. As their use value has decreased their value as historical audio documents has grown. To produce a sound effects LP in the age of digital audio libraries is an anachronistic gesture intended to elevate what purports to be a generic collection of recordings intended for functional use to the level of an artwork.

The album is in part a homage to classic ranges of sound effects albums such as the BBC Sound Effects Library - even down to the utilitarian design and functional descriptions of the sounds (a key aspect of this release). Such generic collections of sounds were intended to fulfil the needs of professional and amateur broadcasters, filmmakers and theatre producers. However, through careful selection and sequencing it is also intended that this record works as a linear sound composition.

>>> Utilitarian unsounds for undisclosed purposes <<<

All Recordings made by Mark Vernon
Sleeve Design and Artwork by Marc Baines

Drainpipe Drips - Following a sudden downpour

Motorbikes, trucks and tuktuks wait impatiently for the barrier to lift at the busy intersection of Baddegama road. When the alarm bell stops and the barriers rise there is a sudden surge of crisscrossing traffic mixed with train passengers leaving the platform of nearby Hikkaduwa train station.

31st October, 2013.

Rail crossing warning bell and train passing

By David Fulford and Mark Vernon.

Out now on Gagarin Records. Available to buy here:
https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/time-deferred

Followers of the artist Mark Vernon will note a subdued and pensive mood on this new record. Monochrome and sepulchral, these tracks are in a minor key, a key which opens the door to a damp cellar of the imagination. Too-many legged spiders crawl over dusty violins. Time lurches, loops and echoes like excursions on slow motion railways in reverse. Concrète noir sombre séances for non-believers. Tauntological voices from the past provoke us. Half guessed ghosts, magnetic phantoms from funereal-to-reel tape recordings. The sibilant persistence of the deceased evokes the exhausted dread of waiting for a medical test result. Enigmatic messages thrown to the werewolves with nothing but cheap medication and some breathing exercises for support. 

Caution: this record can cause dreamless nights. 

“Psychedelic visions, blackouts and blinding lights reveal an unusual, sick, and feverish musicality... here the gods come back from the dead only to ensure us an existence nurtured by the freezing rays of a black sun.” 

Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up (Feb 2022)

Time Deferred

Athanasia

Torquay, 1969

‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital' - Volume 1 in the Sonograph Sound Effects Series - is a long-playing sound effects record in a limited edition of 250 copies. The record was produced by Mark Vernon during a two year period as digital artist in residence at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Scotland.

The sounds featured on the LP were recorded in several different hospital departments including: Anaesthesiology, the Clinical Simulation Centre, Health Records, Outpatients reception, the Laboratories, Ophthalmology, Oral and Maxillofacial, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine, the Mail Room, the Neonatal Unit, Pharmacy and the Renal Unit. In addition to Forth Valley Royal, recordings were also made in Stirling and Falkirk Community Hospitals. Thanks to all staff and patients in NHS Forth Valley Hospitals for their help and co-operation.

All recordings by Mark Vernon 2011 – 2013. Sleeve design by Marc Baines. Label artwork by Keppie Design.

This project was supported by Creative Scotland and NHS Forth Valley.

Available to buy here: https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-of-the-modern-hospital

Track listing:

Side A
1		Full Blood Count Analyzer 	
2		Automated Instrument Rinse System 	
3		MRI Scanner 	
4		Anaesthetic Machine 	
5		METI Human Patient Simulator 	
6		SimMan Essential Mannequin 	
7		Cardiac Monitor 	
8		Lee Silverman Voice Treatment 	
9		Haemoglobin A1C Analyzer 	 
10		Anaesthetic Machine 	
11		Infusion Pump (Alaris Plus) 	
12		Heater Fan 	
13		Phacoemulsifier 	
14		Robotic Pharmacy 	
15		CT Scanner 	
16		Pharmacy Label Printer 
17		Dialysis Machine 	
18 		Draeger Oxylog 3000 Plus

Side B 	
19		METI Human Patient Simulator 	
20		Orthopantomograph OP 2000 	
21		Helium Cooler for MRI Scanner 	
22		Coagulation Analyzer 	 
23		METI HPS Mannequin 	
24		Ophthalmology 	 
25		Sysmex SP1000i 07) Automated Slide-maker  
26		AGV (Automatic Guided Vehicle) 
27		Ultrasound Scanner 	
28		Operating Theatre 	
29		Beckman Coulter Access 2 Analyzer 	
30		Geiger Counter (Berthold LB124) 
31		Automated Mailroom (OPEX Mail Matrix) 	
32		Wall Mounted Suction Unit 	
33		Dialysis Machine

Sounds of the Modern Hospital LP (Side A)

“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” 
 (Don Draper, Mad Men)

Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slideshow of the mind’s eye - projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listeners’ mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism.

Each episode is based on a found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the 60s and 70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from my own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that I have collected over the past twenty years.

Scotland, 1971

From the new album - 'Sound Postcards from the Centre of the Periphery' by Manja Ristić and Mark Vernon.

We made this 13-track journey around the sounds and sonic histories of the island of Korčula. In addition to our own field recordings, we were given access to the audio archives of the local radio station, including recordings of folk customs, traditional songs, dances and music...

This album unites two specific sensibilities that for many years have been embedded in the domain of sound and radio arts. Although they arose from very different environments, their work explores similar issues around preserving personal sonic histories. By stirring up nostalgia and collective memory, both artists often refer to the importance of individual experiences in the poetic "body" of micro-communities. 

The artistic practice of both creators has been deeply immersed in the sonic strata of space and the imaginary narratives that emerge from it. A dedication to the culture of memory, the sounding of lost voices and an unorthodox approach to re-composing the soundscape, conveniently unites these two experimenters in a collaboration that arises from research into one particularly inspiring locality – the island of Korčula. 

In addition to their own field recordings the artists were given access to the audio archives of the local radio station, including sounds of local folk customs, traditional songs, festivities and music. The strong anthropological emphasis in this collection of works is intended to encourage a deeper consideration of the coexistence of people and the environment in a historically dense climate. The appropriation of the hidden narratives of a small town on the fringes of the European Union opens up new fields of reflection on identity that looks back at the "center of the periphery", pointing to the importance of "small" spaces in the creation of European heritage. 

‘Sound postcards from the center of the periphery’ will be stored permanently in the audio archives of Radio Korčula. Who knows, maybe someone will dig them out in 50 years and say: "...there you go! This will make your head ring!" 

Special thanks to Radio Korčula, Gordana Šuperak and Ivan Sardelic Šore. To Pere from the Marasa printing house and to all the fellow citizens of Korčula who found themselves on this album intentionally or accidentally.

Manja Ristić and Mark Vernon - Voli more drš’ se kraja / Love the Sea but Stay on the Shore

Video: https://vimeo.com/106673473

Sound Test 5.1 is a short sound film produced in collaboration with visual effects artist, Loday Gonpo. A site-specific cinematic artwork designed especially for Tyneside Cinema’s auditoria. For several months the film was surreptitiously inserted into the cinema programme, playing, unannounced, before all main features.
 
The film is a playful riff on more functional speaker tests used by cinema projectionists to check that the sound system is operating correctly. Typical tests check the volume, frequency range and position of each speaker plus any synchronisation or phasing issues between them. Under the guise of a sound test the work explores the mechanics of the 5.1 surround sound system, temporarily breaking the spell of the surround-sound illusion to draw the audience's attention to the location of the speakers within the cinema environment.

The distinctly retro sounding electronic noises used in the sound test are matched perfectly by the backward looking motion graphics that were designed to mirror the way the audio moves through the space in three dimensions.

The film was commissioned by Pixel Palace for Tyneside Cinema. It was produced in 5.1 surround sound with both stereoscopic 3-D and 2-D versions. Sound Test 5.1 featured in Tyneside Cinema’s film programme from February to April, 2014. 


Sound Test 5.1

Produced by Mark Vernon and London Fieldworks.

'Sound of Lochaber' - Episode 1 of a six-part series on Resonance 104.4FM created for 'Remote Performances' - a daily live broadcast from Outlandia, a unique artists’ field-station in Glen Nevis, Lochaber, Scotland. The broadcasts include 20 specially commissioned artist performances and programmes created with local residents that provide a timely reflection on contemporary ideas of remoteness, capturing and transmitting creative interactions with the land, its history and people and the tensions between nature, industry, tourism and heritage.

Sound of Lochaber Episode 1 - The Gathering

Audio Archaeology Series Volume 3: Brest

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France.

The piece is comprised of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel’s tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations.

In the composition family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space.

Empire Of Dampness

A Last Lesson From The Silent Teachers

The Past Imperfect

Audiology for Beginners is a playful (though somewhat impractical) attempt at delivering a hearing test over the airwaves. The typical sounds of the hearing test - sine tones at specific frequencies and masks of white noise used to obscure voices - also happen to be the foundational building blocks of electronic music. These ideas and the palette of sounds generated from this source material are combined in a piece that is part radiophonic composition and part genuine attempt at a workable over the air hearing exam.

Audiology for Beginners was first broadcast on WGXC 90.7 FM in the Greene and Columbia Counties of New York State in 2014 . The work was completed during a residency at the Wave Farm study centre in Acra, NY.

Supported by Creative Scotland.

Audiology For Beginners - a self assessment radio hearing test

An excerpt from the collaborative album - Marc Baron / Mark Vernon - post-chance (Erstwhile 097) 

https://erstwhilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/post-chance

Recorded by Marc Baron and Mark Vernon between June 2022 and October 2023 
Mastered by Taku Unami 
Produced by Jon Abbey

Marc Baron & Mark Vernon - post-chance (excerpt) (Erstwhile Records, 2024)

From the Futura Resistenza LP 'The Dramaturgy of Decay' by Mark Vernon.

https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/the-dramaturgy-of-decay

The Years Simply Dissolved

The Town Was A Tomb And The Sky Its Vault

A Wrong Turn Towards Eternity

From the album 'Unforced Errors' - out now on Vice de Forme.

Cassette and download:

Frosty sea green cassette - C-42 - limited edition of 70 copies.
Silkscreened box. Includes download code. 

Recorded and composed by Mark Vernon
Violin: Manja Ristić

Igneous Intrusions

From the album 'Unforced Errors' on Vice de Forme.

Music & mixing by Mark Vernon
Sonopetry& mixing by @ilaria_boffa

Sonopoem - 'Ode for Complexity' by Ilaria Boffa

'Ode for Complexity

And what’s next? Next roots to eradicate, cultures to dominate, archetypes to steal. Cyborg and Pseudo.
Assume mediocrity. No phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional or superior.
Assume the principle, ‘if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it's likelier to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories’.
And yet, the probability of being mediocre is increasing. The service of thinking is at risk.
Too-much-ness of counter-intuition. It’s hard to do difficult things.

*‘E’ difficile fare le cose difficili:
parlare al sordo,
mostrare la rosa al cieco.
Bambini, imparate a fare le cose difficili:
dare la mano al cieco,
cantare per il sordo,
liberare gli schiavi che si credono liberi’.

Clouds are moving fast. They’re shifting perspective. Carry me with you.'

* Nursery rhyme by Gianni Rodari, late Italian writer, especially children’s literature, pedagogist, journalist and poet.

It’s difficult to do difficult things: 
To talk to a deaf,
to show a rose to a blind. 
Children! Learn to do difficult things:
take the blind by hand, 
sing for the deaf, 
set free slaves who believe themselves free.

Nexotic Dislocation (with Ilaria Boffa)

From the 2025 album 'Unforced Errors' on Vice de Forme.

Hand-Me-Downs

An elliptical and enigmatic new release by Mark Vernon. Named after the microscopic crystals of calcium carbonate within our inner ear that can cause vertigo when dislodged, the album has an equally disorientating effect as all sense of time is dissolved in its delicate folds. Otoconia is an abstract and deeply immersive sonic experience crafted through the intricate interplay of field recordings and the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer.

Known for his evocative soundscapes and narrative-driven compositions, Vernon has ventured into uncharted territory with this album. Unlike anything else in his oeuvre this fifty-plus minute work is an immersive, hypnotic sound bath of frequencies and tones. The deft use of ambient textures and abstract sonic gestures draws listeners into a liminal state, offering a meditative, introspective listening experience.

Composed using the legendary EMS Synthi 100, the basis of the piece is formed from processed field recordings run through a chain of the Synthi's filters and effects. For the most part the piece was mixed live with some tinkering and adjustments after the fact. A significant departure from the work with found tapes and audio archaeology that Vernon has become known for, we hope you enjoy losing yourself in this sublimely mysterious musical mirage.

Released on Greek experimental label Granny in a limited edition of 100 CDs.

Composed and recorded by Mark Vernon · Mastered by Yannis Tsirikoglou · Artwork by Yorgos Vourlidas


Otoconia (excerpt) (Granny Records, 2024)

From the Album 'Magneto Mori: Brussels ' on Flaming Pines.

One way to interpret Vernon’s evocation of Brussels is as a patchwork of interdependent absences. We hear numerous spoken stories, yet none of them in full; details are lost to magnetic erasure, to the truncations of compositional editing, to the recollective limits of fallible minds. A voice hesitates as it recounts an early memory of falling. Another falters into damaged tape as it describes a trip into the forest, words sunken irretrievably under disruptive plosives. Into these gaps, Vernon pours atmospheres that perfectly render sensations of potential and inarticulability: the gurgling of water, the overlapping chatter of public spaces, amorphous suspensions of drone, all of which act like guardians to these tender zones of absent specifics.

One speaker describes their return to a familiar space as like “rewriting on the same page, and sort of erasing what I had lived there, in order to make space for new memories”. It’s therefore perfect that Vernon’s process should centre the manipulation of analogue tape: a medium synonymous with the imperfect overlay of the past upon itself, with the previous contents of overwritten cassettes forever threatening to burst through. After recording residents of Brussels describing their earliest childhood memories, Vernon intentionally distressed the tape and buried it underground for 10 days, placing it alongside magnets that damaged and part-erased the contents. These recordings were then excavated and recombined in a random sequence, with Vernon occasionally “reconstructing” damaged memories by inserting extracts from the higher-fidelity originals. Despite the hands-on nature of this process, the end result feels like a more authentic depiction of the interaction between time and human memory than if Vernon had simply allowed the untampered tape to run. The present is never an immaculate and unbroken “now”, but a nonlinear jostle of immediate sensory experience, overlain recollections and lost histories pressing in at the edges, the words scrawled over themselves until the page starts to give way.

Magneto Mori: Brussels (excerpt 1)

Pespirito Pisco Sour

'Dead Air Spaces' – a new live radio work created for Radio Revolten. Recorded at the Radio Revolten Club on Tuesday, 25th October 2016.

'Dead Air Spaces' is a new radio work that explores one of the most basic but vital of our bodily functions – breathing. It includes interviews with diving instructors, a singer, an organist and a yoga teacher and recordings of breathing exercises, snoring, pneumatic tube systems, purring cats, suction units and scuba-divers along with mechanical processes analogous to the human respiratory system such as church organs, bellows and hospital ventilators. The piece also incorporates the use of bi-nasal microphones, a balloon repurposed as an artificial lung and variety of pipes, tubes, whistles and other apparatus played live.

A ‘dead air space’ in diving terminology, refers to air that doesn’t play a part in the gas exchange with the lungs; air left over in the snorkel, regulator or even the throat containing greater levels of carbon dioxide.

www.radiorevolten.net

Dead Air Spaces  - live at Radio Revolten 2016

A radio documentary about the 'Sound House' - a site-specific installation created by Sarah Kenchington. With the help of staff at Modern Art Oxford Sarah transformed a recently vacated family home that was due for demolition into a multi-faceted musical instrument. I was originally commissioned to document the installation through sound with a brief to re-work this material into a composition that in some way reflected the experience. Interviews with Sarah and several former residents of the now demolished Orlit houses on the Rosehill estate were combined with these compositions and field recordings to form the basis of this programme.

Sound House - Radio Programme

Limited edition CD/download out now on Jason Lescalleet's Glistening Examples. Purchase here:

http://meagreresource.com/paper-gestures/

Paper Gestures was originally created as an 8-channel sound work at EMS, Stockholm in 2019. The piece is based upon field recordings made across Norway over a 13-year period including sounds of military exercises with tank fire, a road surface stripping machine, breaking panes of glass, high speed trains, ultrasound recordings of stomach noises, wind whistling through vents on the Oslo underground, sliding wardrobe doors, microwaved popcorn, soap suds, bee hives, hand bells and bicycle races. 

Composed from field recordings made in Oslo, Lillestrøm, Deset, Eidsvoll, Risør, Øysang, Røros and Trondheim, Norway between 2006 and 2018.

Released 27th February, 2020.

Created with the support of EMS and Creative Scotland.

Permea - from 'Paper Gestures' CD (Glistening Examples)

For bookings: meagreresource@hotmail.com

Mark Vernon is a Glasgow based sound artist who works with found tapes and acousmatic presence. His work explores themes of magnetic memory, audio archaeology, voyeurism and nostalgia. 

His solo music projects have been published through labels including Kye, Glistening Examples, Flaming Pines, Misanthropic Agenda, Gagarin, Sonoris, Granny, Psychetropes, Persistence of Sound, Flag Day, Entr’acte, Discrepant, Futura Resistenza, Vice de Forme, Calling Cards and Canti Magnetici. 

He co-runs and curates Glasgow art radio station, Radiophrenia and has produced programmes for stations internationally.

Mark Vernon

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