Mark Van Hoen
Encyclopedia
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Mark Van Hoen (born September 1966 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) is an electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
artist. He has created music under his own name as well as Locust, and Autocreation. He was a founder member of the influential group Seefeel
Seefeel
Seefeel are a British electronic/post-rock band formed in the early 1990s. They are currently signed to Warp Records.-Biography:Seefeel formed during 1992 in London, England; with Mark Clifford on guitar, Mark Van Hoen on bass, Justin Fletcher on drums and Sarah Peacock on vocals and guitar. During...
. The BBC said, "in a brief listen one can hear the influence on Boards of Canada
Boards of Canada
Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin...
's damaged melodies and dense claustrophobia, more so even than usual suspects like the Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin
Richard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
." Pitchfork said, "Musically, Van Hoen belongs to a distinguished family tree. Originally influenced by the likes of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream, and later presaging both Autechre's glitch and Boards of Canada's pastoral IDM, with his latest album Van Hoen would fit in just as well alongside White Rainbow or Atlas Sound on a current label like Kranky: He combines oceanic drone with pop lyricism, using technology as a catalyst.."
Mark Van Hoen signed with Belgian Label R&S in 1993. The initial releases were as Locust and used vintage analogue synthesizers and tape recorders. As the Locust sound moved towards an increasingly more vocal oriented approach in the late 90s, Mark Van Hoen also began to release music under his own name
Biography
Born in Croydon, England (26 September 1966), grew up in SmethwickSmethwick
Smethwick is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the edge of the city of Birmingham, within the historic boundaries of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
(part of The Black Country, an industrial area in the Midlands of England).He began to create electronic music in 1981. In 1983 Mark embarked on a career in radio and moved to London in 1988, during the Acid House explosion. In 1993, R&S records signed Mark Van Hoen after hearing a demo tape and attending a live performance. In 1994 Mark shared a house with Darren Seymour (Seefeel) and Neil Halstead (Slowdive), and then the following year Mark moved his studio to the Fortress studio complex in East London. During this time he also shared a house with another musical collaborator, 4AD artist Vinny Miller
Vinny Miller
Vinny Miller is a British singer-songwriter and record producer, once signed to the 4AD label.He first came to musical prominence in 1998 as a 4AD signing under the moniker Starry Smooth Hound, releasing a track co-produced by Guy Fixsen on the label sampler Anakin.Two singles, "Pigpen" and...
.
At the end of 1999, R&S records was sold to Sony and Mark Van Hoen was dropped from the label; at the same time, the Fortress studios were closed down. Mark now lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and children.
Influences
The town where Mark spent his childhood, Smethwick, had an influence on his music. Smethwick had a number of steel and metal factories, and rhythmic sounds from these formed a soundtrack to his early life. Also, the town was possibly the first in England to be inhabited by a large number of Jamaican and Indian immigrants; Mark Van Hoen is of Indian-Jamaican and English descent, and was exposed to music from all these cultures during his childhood. This had a lasting effect on Mark Van Hoen's musical personality, particularly the rhythmic aspects of Reggae, and the drone keys of Indian music. Mark Van Hoen was originally drawn to electronic music though a love of KraftwerkKraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
and other electronic acts from Germany such as Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
and Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
. Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, Cabaret Voltaire
Cabaret Voltaire (band)
Cabaret Voltaire were a British music group from Sheffield, England.Initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, the group was named after the Cabaret Voltaire, a nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland that was a centre for the early Dada movement.Their earliest performances...
and other British electronic musicians also inspired him significantly. Additionally, at the core of his inspiration lies the work of early electronic music from the likes of Delia Derbyshire
Delia Derbyshire
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
and Edward Artemiev's soundtracks to Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....
science fiction films Solaris
Solaris (1972 film)
Solaris is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris , directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to...
and Stalker
Stalker (film)
Stalker is a 1979 science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, loosely based on their novel Roadside Picnic...
as well as the electronic innovations in the pop music world of early Human League
The Human League
The Human League are an English electronic New Wave band formed in Sheffield in 1977. They achieved popularity after a key change in line-up in the early 1980s and have continued recording and performing with moderate commercial success throughout the 1980s up to the present day.The only constant...
and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are a synthpop group whose founding members are originally from the Wirral Peninsula, England...
. In 1991, after a brief period of musical inactivity, Mark Van Hoen heard the more sophisticated post acid-house music that was to inspire him to make music again, the primary example being LFO
Discography As Locust
- 1993 Skysplit - R&S Records
- 1994 In Remembrance Of Times Past - Apollo Records
- 1994 Natural Composite - Apollo Records
- 1994 Needle 12" - Apollo Records
- 1994 Weathered Well - Apollo Records
- 1995 Truth Is Born Of Arguments - Apollo Records
- 1997 Morning Light - http://music.hyperreal.org/labels/apollo Apollo Records]
- 2001 Wrong - Touch Records
Discography As Mark Van Hoen
- 1997 The Last Flowers From The Darkness - Touch Records
- 1998 Playing With Time - Apollo Records
- 2004 The Warmth Inside You
- 2010 Where Is The Truth - City Centre Offices