Album Notes

Here is a review by Sylvain Lupari of Quebec for www.gutsofdarkness.com:

Mark Jenkins is an English musician strongly inspired from the universe of Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream 70’s area. Founder of label Amp, he privileges a music which is inspire by a mix of electronic and progressive. In this respect, he qualifies This Island Earth, its 14th album, as being a mixture of Cluster and Tangerine Dream.

Recorded both in Europe and in the United States, This Island Earth is divided into 3 stages and wants to be, for its author, an over flight of compositions and recordings methods which made evolve the art, since the first analog stammerings.

Composed entirely on a Apple/Cuba Lap Top, New Jersey Shore opens on a hybrid sequence, coat of a floating synth with tepid atmospheres. Sequences circle gently, forming a harmony which finds melody on a more flexible synth. The rhythm becomes animate and we pain to believe all the possibilities that could get out from a single Lap Top. Extremely melodious, with a fluty synth, the title increases in intensity, before striking a more atmospheric wave on Metuchen. Though the movement becomes animate, it is plunge in a light spectral environment, always fastened with nervous sequences, jerky but attract by a direction of uniformity. The tone is light, the sound effects are well arch and the rhythm is constant, just like the final of this 1st part which wants to be more aggressive and progressive.

Mark Jenkins does not break anything here, but I do not believe that it was the main idea. He rather wants to show the capacities of a music in constant evolution which serves the pop modern as much as techno as we know it. Following this, New Jersey Shore is a beautiful success.

This Island Earth sounds sci-fi as its title suggests. A mixture of analog and digital equipment, Jenkins works in the spheres of an intelligent techno to very current sonorities. The ambiance is highly charged with very symphonic synths and unbridled percussions. Guitars riffs eat a rhythm crossing funk and groovy, in an electronic atmosphere festival. More spacey, without losing intensity, Exeter's Challenge & Building The Interocitor is mould on a superb sequencer, restrained by vaporous guitar and twisted synth solos. The title plunges in a cosmic stratosphere about semi time, to soak in controlled elements of a world without gravity. Rich and consistent, the floating pads inspire a futuristic world which planes in a multicoloured universe as the beautiful time of the 70’s. Psychedelic and fascinating, Jenkins reachs his goal by offering a sci-fi voyage to feverish orchestral arrangements hear Crash Landing Earth, showing the immense possibilities of EM, in a very harmonious context.

The last part is more conventional, being recorded at Dutch Festival Alfa Century in 2002. Very analog, the intro is floating and moves on orchestral mellotrons and percussion to authoritative march. Fleeing the facilities of the gliding progressions, Jenkins jumps instantaneously on progressive rhythms with The Swords Of Truth which beats on a good modular sequencer and one symphonic synth. The atmosphere is filtered of timeless musical loops which modulate the progression of the tempo towards a narrower, and more concise, stride. A superb piece which progresses continuously, without levelling out, to offer a constant creativity on beautiful rhythmic sequences and a synth to nimble solos.

You will find on the net not very flattering criticisms on this Mark Jenkins last opus, and I totally disagree to them. Quite to the contrary, the English synthesist admirably made a success of his analysis of the evolution of the electronic parts, while delivering an extremely coloured opus which revolves around these evolutions. To me, This Island Earth is a great album of modern, and vintage, EM. But I have to admit it’s the kind of EM I do enjoy a lot.