MUSICIANS
John Beckmann: music + cover art
Dämmerungschor: backing vocals
Recorded at Lux Astralis Studio, New York
From January - July 2023
Waves: mastering

PRESS RELEASE:

GUITARWORKS presents a decalogue of soundscapes molded in the hands of John Beckmann, a consummate artist whose love of the visual bleeds through every note and texture. Like the ambient treks of Aarktica (Jon DeRosa), Beckmann turns the spaces between us into songs of vibrant connectivity. What sets these journeys apart is their circularity: destinations and points of departure are one and the same.

If the desolation of “Ascension” tells us anything about what we are about to experience, it is that stillness is an illusion of a restless mind. The human body is constantly in motion, the heart buried within it even more so, beating at the center of things with the insistence of communication. Along the canvas it stretches toward the concluding “Numinous,” it paints one transcendent image after another as melodies take resolutely physical form.

Shades of Americana (“Topanga Canyon”) slide across deserts as if made of glass, picking up dreams and other bits of imagination along the way, while distorted hymns of the night (“Constellations”) reveal an orthography in the stars. In the latter vein, “Martian Daydreams” epitomizes the album’s wonders, combining radio waves and linguistic impulses in a slow-motion mayday signal from somewhere deeper than all of us could comprehend.

And while the occasional presence of voices in tracks like “Luminescent” and “Volk Folk” keep us earthbound, there’s something undeniably extraterrestrial about the encounter. Then again, perhaps the purpose of all this is to remind us of where we came from. Either way, GUITARWORKS is a live wire with just enough electricity to hum without harm, tempering the threat of death with a warmth we’ve been missing for years.

AURORA

"Anyone having trouble getting to, or staying, asleep should proceed with caution when playing The Mortal Prophets’ debut album around bedtime. The demonic intentions implied by the album’s name and defined by John Beckmann, along with Irish producer multi-instrumentalist William Declan Lucey’s, unorthodox approach, coils each selection in menacing directions, bringing fresh, often frightening twists to these standards. Be aware - when you engulf yourself in these riveting, uncompromising performances. They are not for the squeamish.”
- American Songwriter

John Beckmann and his evolving band of genre-bending roustabouts dig deep into America’s primal scream. Beckmann channels an apocalyptic vision from pre-war blues legends such as Lead Belly, Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, and Robert Johnson, which are transmuted via the experimental ethos of German Electronica, groups such as Neu!, Can, Cluster, Harmonia, Eno, Bowie, and Suicide.

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