MARK TEMPLETON: STANDING ON A HUMMINGBIRD
Nice title! And, oooh. It's a very nice recording too. This debut album by electro-acoustic glitchtronica artist Mark Templeton should appeal to fans of Paul Wirkus, Mitchell Akiyama, Guiseppi Ielasi and others working in the experimental-but-beautiful, lowercase field of painterly abstraction, processed instruments, delicate drone, and (last but not least) ambient melodies. Mark Templeton's use of guitar, accordion, vibraphone, cymbals and especially banjo have us most closely comparing this to Geoff Mullen's wonderful thrtysxtrllnmnfstns, as Templeton is similarly submersing the notes played acoustically into a warm, electric bath of creaking staticky stuff, accompanied by murmuring field recordings and chirping digital glitch, like the pleasant but disintegrated soundtrack to some grainy super 8 footage, barely heard beneath the whirr of the film projector itself. Sweet swells of sound throb and drift, fracture and coalesce. It's all very lovely and mysterious, gentle caresses for curious ears. - Aquarius Records - September 2007
Fuelled by the same opulent minimalism that has given Christian Fennesz such a colossal following, this debut album from Mark Templeton is executed with such effortless brilliance that on first listen we were convinced that it was the work of a seasoned master. Brimming with delicate acoustic instruments (banjo, guitar and accordion), "Standing On A Hummingbird" threatens to unfurl into a collection of traditional songs before Templeton works into them like clay, totally remoulding and redeveloping each and every note into a processed entity that's as fragile as it is enticing, allowing delicate subtleties and intricacies to flood out into the fore. This is of course not a new concept, and has most notably been mastered the aforementioned Fennesz, but Templeton injects his compositions with a late night grace that's exceptionally beautiful and almost impossible to ignore within moments of its palatial opening. Another good comparison to Templeton's sound would be NYC operatives Mountains who also manage to successfully imbue their academic excursions with an Eno-esque leaning towards the more pastoral sounds of life - but where Mountains rely on long passages of drifting ambience, Templeton instead harnesses his productions into short, perfect snapshots of beauty. Rarely does a track here go over the five-minute mark, lending proceedings here a bijou fragility that makes it almost impossible not to go back to the begining as soon as the album comes to a close. Much like recent offerings from the Miasmah label (last week's stunning album from Rafael Anton Irissari and the hugely acclaimed debut from Greg Haines in particular), Ezekiel Honig's Anticipate label has here delivered a first release that's as breathtaking and important as any album of its ilk we've heard in recent years, making this a true classic in the making for all lovers of fragile music that pulls at the heartstrings while challenging accepted musical conventions. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE. - Boomkat - February 2007
There are a couple of very brief moments on "Amidst Things Uncontrolled," the opener to Mark Templeton's debut Standing On A Hummingbird, where the distant sound of children yelling and playing breaks through the scratches and pops of Templeton's glitch electronics and heavily processed acoustic instruments. Many electronic artists use field recording samples as segues between tracks, movements, or rhythmic shifts; here the sound is woven right into the very fabric of the song, appearing for a few seconds and then retreating again. The sound of children is always going to produce nostalgia and connotations of innocence; however, its use as rhythmic sleight of hand achieves the same feat as much of Boards of Canada's output: Templeton captures sounds in a way which itself reflects the subject matter of his songs. In other words, the ephemeral nature of the sound delves well beyond the forced naivete of some twee pop groups (or even less visceral ambient artists) to a haunting, melancholy space that hints at vague, distant memories. The clip doesn't simply evoke childhood; using sounds that are not his (as the title suggests) Templeton reminds us of our distance from it.
Templeton supplements these ghostly impressions of real life with a moving current combining the usual stock of glitch artists with acoustic instrumentation. The technique almost seems like a cliche at this point, evoking images of either a laptop artist throwing instruments overtop of the mix to obtain some vague ideal of more "organic" electronic music or a folkie attempting to disguise rote strumming and plucking with clever effects. Standing On A Hummingbird is miles beyond either, the live instruments so firmly entangled in a mesh of painterly abstraction it's often impossible to tell where the sound is coming from. In this respect, he'll probably garner comparisons to Fennesz; however, Fennesz rarely allows the listener glimpses into the source of his sounds. Here, acoustic guitar, violin, and harmonica are present like the objects in a faded photograph: recognizable, but in their newfound context, evoking a completely different set of responses.
Most of the album finds Templeton mining the incidental byproducts of instrumentation: the scratches of fingers across strings, the inconsistency of a bow across a cello. There's a strikingly human element to this strategy; consider how the long harmonica drones on "Roots Growing" recall the slow, deep breathing which creates the sound in the first place. It's hard to ignore that dreaded "organic" tag here, but at least it's well-earned, highlighting how even the most technologically-enhanced music ultimately stems from a process in real time and space; how all art is the interaction between a human being and his or her environment.
Thankfully, Standing On A Hummingbird maintains this element not only in origin but also execution, as the tracks shift according to an internal logic that typically eschews any notion of conventional rhythm. On "From Verse to Verse" the "beats," if they can be called that, skip along in a way which makes the tempo seem to rise and fall until the movement itself becomes the source of the track's pulse. This abstract approach to composition does allow moments of more conventional instrumentation; however, Templeton uses those moments to give tracks like "Pattern for a Pillow" and "Difficult to Light" a chance to develop in ways as unpredictable as his less traditional work. For example: the former track is based around relatively simple guitar picking but Templeton skips, reorders, layers, and otherwise manipulates his source material to reveal hidden counter-melodies and shifting rhythms.
The best part about that track, however, may be the scratching of strings; it sounds like a series of echoes from a hollow chamber and remains prominent even with the other guitar parts present. It's these little details that give Standing On A Hummingbird its strong sense of melancholy, or desolation. If it weren't for these elements, it simply be a well-executed experiment, but as it stands it's one of the more haunting pieces of sound art in recent memory. - Joel Elliott for Cokemachineglow - May 1, 2007
Canadian Mark Templeton's Standing On A Hummingbird is a stunning debut for Ezekiel Honig's new Anticipate label. Although reference points of Fennesz and fellow Canadians Tim Hecker and Mitchell Akiyama on Templeton's sound are evident, Templeton's tight digital editing and acoustic guitar processing is quite unique. Integrating field recordings into his processed sound adding texture and location to these works that oscillate between ambient solace and discomfort. The sound of mechanical gears on brooding and funereal 'Roots Growing' brings a tension and haste to the melodic drones, whilst on 'Pattern For A Pillow' processed feedback growls beneath guitar and cello. In amongst the digital clicks and processing haze on other tracks there is a distinctly human feel to much of the sound with the digital being humanized by other instrumentation and room recordings - the short snatch of accordion that emerges from the tail end of 'Pigeon Hurt' resolves the glitch it ripples through. Highly recommended. - Cyclic Defrost - April 2007
Mark Templeton's music, if made of fewer interlocking pieces, operates on similar principles. Standing on a Hummingbird sounds a lot like its title suggests, as individual notes lose their outlines and distinct tones blur into a scarab's smear. His processing - cutting and looping sounds at odd intervals, so that an elliptical sense of repetition gets jostled by all kinds of random potholes - has left a digitally cobwebbed air about everything (the now-canonical "glitch" sound familiar from Oval). But glitch music has seldom sounded this supple, as piano reverb washes everything in watery ambiance and nervous guitar figures crabwalk across the skipped digits. Again, it's not without precedent: the way the movements phase slowly into each other in "Amidst Things Uncontrolled" owes a fair debt to Gastr Del Sol's reconfigured roots music, and the fizzy "Difficult to Light" isn't all that far off from some of Loren MazzaCane Connors' one-note meditations. But again, it's in the way the acoustic material seems to crumble into vague new shapes that's so arresting; a track like "Roots Growing" unfolds like a sheet of paper being crumpled into a ball and lovingly smoothed out again. - Philip Sherburne for Emusic - June 2007
Those familiar with the granular acoustics of Tim Hecker, Fennesz and Mitchell Akiyama will find safe harbour in this new label's introductory release. Albertan Mark Templeton's palette starts with the guitar, banjo and accordion, all of which quickly discorporate and gain a new digital eminence of colours. The edits are extreme in their detail yet an unhurried calm governs each track. Pieces like "Pigeon Hurt" and the title track make halting progress as each chord and string is made to stutter and backtrack before pushing on. Still, progress is always present in the ghostly pulse of song structures that send signals from various depths. Templeton is equally attentive to the digital overflow of accidents from over-amplification and dangling shards of trimmed noises. He skilfully folds these into the mix along with incidental room sounds to blur the inside computer/outside world distinctions. While comparisons to the above mentioned artists are easy to make, this work is seldom predictable. Templeton manages to create a record that follows feverish dream logic, with colours that brighten and suddenly fade, and details that transfigure without altering their basic character. A welcome addition to the canon. - Exclaim! - March 2007
Standing on a Hummingbird is the debut full-length from Edmonton's Mark Templeton, and it also inaugurates the Anticipate label. Consisting exclusively of electro-acoustic experimentation utilizing stringed instruments (primarily banjo and acoustic guitar) and accordion as source material, the album both showcases the dynamic range of the instruments and demonstrates the widely varied manner by which the acoustic sources can be deconstructed and manipulated to create new sonic shapes and textures. The resulting majesty and melancholic intimacy of these ten tracks betray a background in musical theory, which suffuses Templeton's compositional technique with a decidedly postmodern flavor.
Templeton has a preternatural ability to isolate certain textural nuances of sound, stretching and re-shaping them as atmospheric works that reveal themselves gradually. Delicate guitar figures and arpeggiated chords decay into granular particles and re-assimilate as haunting, delicate fragments, each of which is part of a grander recombinant electronic soundscape. His manner is enhanced by the use of field recordings to augment these digital reconfigurations. The sound of fingers sliding along a guitar string, for instance, with the right amount of delay added, is layered atop a vague snatch of conversation and washes of fragile digital static to create a spare, microtonal track imbued with a staggering amount of emotional resonance.
The virtues of subtlety are manifest on Standing on a Hummingbird, as Templeton allows his pieces to unfold slowly without bombarding the listener with a needless cacophony of glitch and other electronic detritus. Far removed from the aseptic, mundane qualities that have begun to characterize the laptop-folk/electro-acoustic movement, this series of compositions is as inventive as it's abundant with sonorous tonal warmth. - Grooves - April 2007
Resembling that state you're in when you fall asleep with the TV on best describes the debut release from Canadian electronic artist Mark Templeton. You know, that blissful, half out of it feeling one gets as dreamland is a mere fraction of a moment away but that late night infomercial keeps you stirring. Templeton uses his laptop to compose songs out of snippets of people talking, static, chirping birds and a variety of acoustic instruments. Each starts with the pairing of a sampled sound or noise -- violin and rain on "Refrain From" and a single resonating note and the rifling through a kitchen drawer on "Amidst Things Uncontrolled." Like a free jazz composer, Templeton proceeds by introducing a crackling new tone or instrument as previous ones drop away, making for uncluttered arrangements that breathe.
What is most notable about Standing on a Hummingbird is the serene, pastoral beauty Templeton creates using fractured, stuttered samples via modern means. The poignant guitar and static duet on "Tentative Growth" delivers hope in its midsection thanks to the addition of a chorus of birds while sparkles of static dance around unedited guitar on "Difficult To Light." This inaugural release from the new (New York City) label Anticipate Recordings is a good reason to look northward for some prime "electro-acoustic" music. [CC] - Other Music - March 2007
Anticipate is a new label from the mind of Microcosm's Ezekiel Honig. It showcases his love for diverse, electronic-based music and doesn't restrict itself to any one particular style although it complements Microcosm in many respects. The inaugural release comes from Canadian Mark Templeton and is a fascinatingly rich collection of tracks. Using various combinations of sound sourcing and design his work comes across as warm, lush, beautifully produced and is full of engaging tones and textures. Predominantly beatless it could conceivably be called ambient, although with the sheer depth of sound involved that's not quite the right despcription. Organic influences (guitars and other such sounds) mingle effortlessly with the electronic elements to create a soothing and beautiful piece of work that will most certainly appeal to fans of 12k and Type. If this is the shape of things to come I'll be eagerly awaiting the next release! Highly recommended indeed. - Smallfish - January 2007
Edmonton, Alberta-based Mark Templeton garnered justifiable attention with his previous solo venture, the Frail as Breath EP, and the CD-DVD Fields Awake project, but his debut full-length Standing on a Hummingbird (also the inaugural release on Ezekiel Honig's Anticipate imprint) signifies a more public coming-out. The album features heavily-processed electro-acoustic meditations wherein the resonant pluck of acoustic guitars, an occasional banjo, and melancholic accordion tones rise to the surface and then, obscured by the dense haze of field elements (street sounds, water, birds) and granularized stutter, disappear from view. One might be tempted to liken his approach to that of Fennesz (and Oval, to a lesser extent) but Templeton's comparatively more intent on constructing contemplative blocks of sound and, furthermore, his axe of choice is acoustic, not electric. Many of his pieces exploit the tension between the contemplative languor of the acoustic guitar playing and the churning swirl of haze (especially prominent in "Pattern For a Pillow") that, in its smeary, prickly, rippling, and crackling diversity, becomes an instrument unto itself. In "Amidst Things Uncontrolled," Templeton juxtaposes acoustic tones and the bright hum of the accordion with ripples and fire-like crackle, while the dreamy "Across From Golden (Remix)" floats guitar lines over fragments that rapidly flutter like a hummingbird's wings. Standing on a Hummingbird offers a stellar collection of explorative and meditative sound sculpting. - textura.org - January 2007
Anticipate is a new label from the Microcosm's Ezekiel Honig. This first release comes from Canadian guitarist and electronic musician Mark Templeton and is a rich collection of beautiful tracks that come across as a minimal and measured take on Christian Fennesz's treated guitar work, but with more electronic sound work incorporated into the beat-less but engaging ambience. An utter pleasure that should appeal to fans of Type, Lampse or Apestaartje. - Warp Records - March 2007
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