Mark Van Hoen ~ The Warmth Inside You
Mark Van Hoen is
probably best known for his vocal-oriented project Locust, but he’s
also responsible for a series of forays into the world of instrumental electronica.
What nominally differentiates Van Hoen’s music from most of its electronic
peers is the analogue technology he deploys, but what really distinguishes
this particular album is the sense of a beating heart at its centre: technology
is harnessed to examine emotional states, rather than to avoid them. The portrait
on the cover of The Warmth Inside You provides a useful signpost to the subject
matter explored here: a woman holds a large object redolent of a womb and,
from a different angle, a bird against her stomach while her apparently troubled
partner lies beside her. Anxiety haunts most of these eight tracks: beats
lumber heavily along like turtles making their way down to the ocean and melodies
occasionally float up like welcome liferafts in music that is alternately
stormy, sepulchral and strangely comforting. Mid-paced tempos pulse all too
patiently and are shadowed occasionally by high tones reminiscent of the sort
of warning bleeps emitted by medical equipment. Van Hoen gradually increases
the pressure by tracing out methodically rising and falling arpeggios. The
result is a distinct tension between the inexorable progress of the music
and the sense of apprehension which hangs over it like an unwelcome stormcloud.
While much of the album delineates feelings of tension and foreboding, the
album ends on an elegiac note with the throbbing bass and echoing chimes of
Three People’s Presence.
Colin Buttimer
October 2004