The Agnostic | TRS092
For this, the second in our series of 12” lathe cut vinyl releases, we are extremely pleased to be bringing you this beauty of a collaborative effort from IHVH…the duo composed of Mark Van Hoen of Locust fame, and violinist and fellow Touch artist, Zachary Paul.
Entitled, “The Agnostic”, this album is an electro-acoustic excursion of sorts into the often obscure worlds of mystical religions of our times. The Kabbalah, the Indian mystics, the Christian church…the moods of these belief systems and more, and their sounds as well, are sampled and referenced throughout these 10 tracks. With a mix of real instrumentation, including the violin playing of Zachary Paul and the cello, bass and viola played by guest musicians on some of the tracks, and the many electronic treatments created by Mark Van Hoen including the sounds of insects, African drumming, liturgical droning, and classical and operatic samples…this portentous and mysterious, at times dark, but overall spiritually absorbing album is an imaginary voyage into the realms of Agnosticism, and it’s insinuations into the other major religions of the world.
As usual this release will come in two distinct physical versions, as well as being available digitally as well.
The over-the-top, limited edition 12″ lathe cut record version, available only from Time Released Sound, comes in an edition of only 70 hand worked copies. Each of these high quality, clear, hand cut records with its 7 tracks comes in a beautifully modified, heavyweight recycled chipboard jacket. On the cover of each jacket is its own uniquely original, tipped on, industrialized and hand collaged 100+ year old religious images from a book illustrated by master Gustave Doré. The engravings have been collaged/modified with hundreds of painstakingly hand cut, equally ancient industrial engravings of gears, machine parts, chains and other suggestive pieces, all cut out with scissors and knife over a period of days. Flip this collage up, and underneath is the textual credit sheet, archivally printed on fragile vintage paper of an equal age. On the back of each record jacket is a modified chart from a book on ancient mystical religions, also printed on the same old paper to match, and each is surrounded by extensive hand stamping created with a vintage set of French symbolist rubber stamps. Each record with its high quality, printed center labels comes in a black polylined inner sleeve, and the entire package comes in an outer heavyweight poly sleeve. As usual, the lathe cut records were hand cut in real time by Michael Lawrence at Bladud Flies, in Wales, UK.
Like the digital version, the CD also comes with the 3 extra tracks not on the lathe cut vinyl version! The lovely CD digipack is a very limited edition of only 100 copies. It is designed using the same original collages that were created especially for the deluxe, lathe cut record version. The CD version must be purchased from Mark Van Hoen himself, at his own Bandcamp page here: https://markvanhoen.bandcamp.com/
This release will ship the week of September 10th 2020.
IHVH is a new collaborative project between Touch artists Zachary Paul and Mark Van Hoen makes its debut release this Friday September 4th 2020.
Zachary’s violin is multi layered and processed, often rendered unrecognizable – with minimal ghostly and decayed electronics added by Mark. Most of the tracks were recorded in an improvisation session at Mark’s studio in Los Angeles. Two of the pieces “Black Angels” and “Sister Ferdinande (Kolkata)” were recorded at film sound maestro Charlie Campagne’s studio – and feature him on double bass as well as Katt Newlon of LA’s Sonic Open Orchestra on cello.
