Mark (Edition Records)
Mark Guiliana
Released July 2024
Grammy Nominee for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album 2025
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lKqixFhYkneBwYJDadMf_FwhsJCnLCqTs
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About:
“MARK” is the new solo record from acclaimed drummer and composer Mark Guiliana: an auditory manifestation of one of the world’s most creative and innovative musical minds.
Ever since the first day he picked up a pair of drumsticks, Mark Guiliana has been instinctively exploring and absorbing the music and rhythms that have been ever-present in his life. Fast forward to the present day and he has earned a formidable reputation as a world-class drummer, composer and thinker at the forefront of contemporary jazz and beyond. Guiliana’s artistry defies convention, weaving together a musical output beyond jazz with the ultimate goal of creating compelling musical narratives. His songs serve as a conduit for his relentless quest for creativity, striving to share his sonic visions with the world in their most unadulterated form.
Guiliana’s new album “MARK”, represents an introspective voyage into his creative depths. On the record, Mark performs solo on a wide array of devices; you can hear his quintessential grooves intermixed with intriguing percussive soundscapes, sublime tapestries of synthesisers and fragments of spoken word. “MARK” is an album that peels back the layers of Guiliana’s experiences, reflections, and the wisdom gleaned from a life immersed in music. It transcends genres and defies categorisation, floating in the boundless space of pure expression. Through music and through life, Mark looks into the mirror and asks eternal questions of identity and growth: who am I, where am I going and what do I stand for?
This album invites listeners to share in Mark’s personal dialogue, offering a sanctuary where they can begin to untangle and examine themselves track by track. “MARK” is an exploration of new and uplifting musical territory, unrestricted by norms and free from preconceived ideas or satisfying (but ultimately unfulfilling) genre expectations. It embodies the impact of Guiliana’s journey, marking his evolution as an artist. This record echoes the spirit of freedom, the courage of inquiry, and the beauty of unfettered expression.
Track Listing:
1. Just Listen 03:56 video
2. Kamakura 04:03
3. Hero Soup 03:20
4. Costello 03:58
5. Motherland 02:16
6. Ritual 01:49
7. Question Mark 02:35
8. Alone 04:46
9. Introspection Station 03:32
10. Peace, please. 05:59
Music composed by Mark Guiliana (HEERNT Music, BMI)
Personnel:
Mark Guiliana: drums, cymbals, percussion, piano, vibraphone, marimba, celeste, pump organ, mellotron, jupiter 8, electronics, drum programming, spoken word
Recorded by Oliver Roman at Studio 606 (Los Angeles, CA), Pete Min at Lucy’s Meat Market (Los Angeles, CA), John Davis at The Bunker Studio (Brooklyn, NY) & Mark Guiliana at HEERNT Headquarters (Los Angeles, CA)
Mixed by Pete Min at Lucy’s Meat Market (Los Angeles, CA)
Mastered by Alex Deturk at The Bunker Studio (Brooklyn, NY)
Album artwork by Oli Bentley, Split
Photos by Charlie Weinmann
Produced by Mark Guiliana
Executive producer Dave Stapleton
Review:
You can’t get much more contemporary than the singular drummer-composer Mark Guiliana. Yet he often seems contrary in his musical choices over the past decade, seesawing between religiously ‘live’ classic acoustic jazz-settings – albeit with sonic sensibilities centred on studio-music – and the improv-meets-electronic art-pop of his BEAT Music project. The new album titled MARK is a kind of DIY home-studio version of the latter, a release that adds to Guiliana’s fast-growing discography on the UK’s Edition label.
This time though, as the title seems to imply, he’s doing it all on his own using a small armoury of keyboards and tuned/untuned percussion. Whatever hat the impactful ex-Avishai Cohen drummer likes to wear at any time, aesthetic standards remain high and MARK is no exception. It has a melodic simplicity coupled with delicately nuanced layers of rhythm, meter and sonics, as befits an extraordinary percussionist who remodels beats from the ancient to the future in real-time.
‘Kamakura’ is typical with seductive ear-worm melody served by delightfully diverse, expressive key and percussive textures while the waltz-like ‘Costello’ sounds like a contemporary cutely electronic soundtrack theme to a quirky new American indie movie. ‘Hero Soup’ is an exhilarating piece of analogue-infused space-age techno-prog while ‘Alone’ seems to borrow harmonically from Radiohead, The Beatles, and to a certain extent revisits Mehliana, his striking 2014 jazztronica collaboration with Brad Mehldau.
He comes across fairly Eno-esque on the hypnotic ‘Motherland’, and hypnotically melodic percussive grooves and distorted gongs create an ominous backdrop to a Guiliana BEAT music staple of pre-recorded voice samples’ on the opening track ‘Just Listen’ – in this case one side of a conversation from a cell phone call urging a distracted artist to just open his ears and allow things to just happen. That might be good advice concerning this record, even though jazz and improv heads of the hardcore variety will probably still want to give it a wide berth.
Nevertheless, MARK should prove irresistible to those who also have an ear for Guiliana’s inspired work in this field.
Selwyn Harris (Jazzwise)
