JENKINS, MARK - THE VISITOR (FT:MARK SHREEVE & JASUN MARTZ/CARD)

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A "lost" album from ‘84 recorded largely at Mark Shreeve’s London studio and featuring his synth solo on one track alongside the guitar of Jasun Martz!

* Please click on the Video icon in right corner above to view & listen to a promotional YouTube album trailer *

‘The Visitor’ is a concept album charting an alien's visit around the globe and taking in the musical styles of various different cities - "Berlin" for sequencer music, "Osaka" for techno-pop, "Istanbul" for ambient world music and many more - and using a frightening array of synths from PPG and Prophet to EMS, Roland, E-Mu, and rarities like the MPC Drum Computer. Part of the music made its debut at the very first UK Electronica festival in Milton Keynes in 1983.
While the sequencer-based work of the “Berlin School” and the music of Jean-Michel Jarre have always been his main area of interest, here you can also find here touches of Ambient and World Music, Folk, Minimalist, Techno-pop and other styles too.

‘The Visitor’ was recorded from late 1983 to Summer 1984 mostly at the North London home studio of Mark Shreeve, who kindly contributed a synthesizer solo to the track 'Katmandu'. Also around at the time was the New York based avant-garde composer Jasun Martz, who contributed voice and acoustic guitar to the same track.
At the time Mark Shreeve was recording for Jive Records and Jenkins was interviewing musicians and reviewing instruments in his role as Technical Editor on the music paper Melody Maker. It was a fascinating experience that bought him into contact with innovative electronic artists like: DEPECHE MODE, WHITE NOISE and TANGERINE DREAM as well as with the latest synthesizers, keyboards and sequencers. Between them they were able to assemble a quite frightening array of instrumentation, some of it very up-to-the-minute for the time, some less so.

While many of the instrumental sounds used are still familiar today - the Sequential Prophet 600 synth for example seeing a rebirth in several different forms recently - the recording technology was quite different. Everything was dependent on an 8-track tape machine - no computer editing, no software synthesizers, and no highly editable digital effects. This tended to mean having to settle after a while for any reasonable take - though various drum machines and sync boxes did help to keep all the rhythmic parts in time.
Mark Jenkins has been very happy looking through this music and making a few minor changes except for re-mastering for a higher audio level, and some hum reduction and cleaner fades.

Other than showing this music around as a demo cassette and Mark having played some sections live (notably at 1983’s premiere UK Electronica festival in Milton Keynes) he can’t understand why this music was not been taken any further until now in 2021!

Here are some extra track details…
‘The Visitor’ was an opening theme used to open the main concerts of the first UK Electronica Festival at Milton Keynes in 1983.
‘Budapest / Peking’ has some world music influences and features the voice of Miriam Rodell on 'Peking'.
‘London’ aims to picture the hectic centre of the great capital city.
‘Istanbul’ is another world music influenced piece, the words adapted from 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' in its most common 1859 translation by Edward FitzGerald and featuring the voice of Jola Kazik.
‘Ballymena’ is an instrumental folk-inspired track created almost entirely on the Sequential Prophet 600, a powerful analog synthesizer you wouldn’t normally associate with these sounds.
‘Katmandu’ is meditational, mysterious and psychedelic - very much influenced by the beautiful albums being created around that time by the likes of Bernard Xolotl and Cyrille Verdeaux and featuring voice and acoustic guitar by Jasun Martz and synthesizer solo by Mark Shreeve.
‘Osaka’ is dedicated to the hustle and bustle of one of Japan’s leading cities, and the techno-pop sounds of YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA.
‘Berlin’ is inspired by the Berlin School of TANGERINE DREAM, ASHRA and Michael Hoenig, but with a more composed, melodic approach, perhaps more reminiscent of Robert Schroeder.
‘The Visit’ is a medley or overture skipping across all the album’s themes, but placed at the end rather than the start - so perhaps in the words of the band KANSAS, a Leftoverture. The closing section owes its existence mainly to Edgar Froese’s cataclysmic guitar finish for TANGERINE DREAM’s 1980 concert sets based on their album ‘Thief'.

‘The Visitor’ is released on 7th December 2021.

Also recently made available by MARK JENKINS …
MARK JENKINS: INFLUENCES (2021 album / Card Cover) CCCD – Stock # 2205734
MARK JENKINS: MODULAR SESSIONS 1:GALACTIC VISION (2021 album / Card) CCCD – Stock # 2205733
MARK JENKINS: TUBULAR BELLS FOR MOOG SYNTHESIZER (2021 album / Card) CCCD – Stock # 2205599
PERSPEXX [MARK JENKINS]: AN INFINITY OF MIRRORS (2021 album / Card Cover CCCD – Stock # 2205600

MARK JENKINS: THE VISTOR Track List:

01. The Visitor (5:34)
02. Budapest / Peking (6:36)
03. London (4:21)
04. Istanbul (4:42)
05. Ballymena (4:20)
06. Katmandu [feat. Mark Shreeve and Jasun Martz] (6:24)
07. Osaka (4:34)
08. Berlin (6:37)
09. The Visit (8:12)

TPT – 51:24