On this episode, I’m pleased to welcome Mark Harwood back to the show. Mark has a long history of publishing, distributing, selling, compiling, and creating music in the realms of the experimental and avant-garde. His primary focus of the last decade has been running the excellent Penultimate Press label, which now based in Berlin, has issued striking contemporary and archival works from the likes of Komare, Triple Negative, Korea Undok Group, Maths Balance Volumes, Small Cruel Party, and Jacques Brodier to name just a few. He has also made some fascinating sound work of his own over the years too, recently issuing one of his strongest full-length efforts yet with the release of Offering, an album put out under his given name that finds him working closely with long-time friend and collaborator, Graham Lambkin. You’ll hear my recent chat with Mark about the challenges of operating Penultimate Press through the past few years, the making of his album Offering, and the plans that he has for the label in the year ahead, amongst other topics.
Since I last spoke to Mark in 2016, he has also gone on to publish several works from the late Danish composer and Fluxus-associated artist, Henning Christiansen. Mark, in close collaboration with Henning’s son, Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen, started the Henning Christiansen Archive as a means to consolidate all of Henning’s vast body of work into one place. As more and more of this work has been published, we are developing a much better understanding of how truly significant of an artist and thinker Henning Christiansen was. In the second half of the show, Thorbjørn, or Tobi as we refer to him, joins Mark and me to discuss his father’s history, work, and legacy. We discuss what it has been like for them combing through the massive amount of recordings and material that Henning left behind and what are some of the future plans for the Henning Christiansen Archive.
Scattered between these interview segments, you’ll hear track selections from some recent and forthcoming titles from both Penultimate Press and the Henning Christiansen Archive. Hope you enjoy this new episode. Feel free to get in touch if you have any comments or questions. As always, thanks for looking and listening.
- ~Introductory Music: Henning Christiansen “Op.192 Umwälzung – Fluxorum Organum 1990 Eurasienstab Ist Immernoch Angelpunkt” (excerpt) Op.192 Umwälzung (Penultimate Press)
- Small Cruel Party “Templum” è vago fior del tempo (Penultimate Press)
- Matthieu Fuentes “Libretto des rêveureuses” Ten-Room Banquet (Penultimate Press)
- Korea Undok Group “Poison Twin” Senescence (Penultimate Press)
- ~Interview segment with Mark Harwood~
- Mark Harwood “Junifare” Offering (Penultimate Press)
- Tim Goss “Fly III” Afterfly (Penultimate Press)
- Étant Donnés “Mercure” Bleu (Penultimate Press)
- ~Interview segment with Mark Harwood~
- Maths Balance Volumes “Stay” Cycles of Tonight (*forthcoming LP on Penultimate Press)
- Anthony Pateras & Jerome Noetinger “1st Coruscation” 15 Coruscations (*forthcoming CD on Penultimate Press)
- Komare “K2” Grace To Breathe That Void (*forthcoming CS on Penultimate Press)
- Sam Esh “A Tistaine Caine” Sammy Sails Sings / Jack of Diamonds (*forthcoming 2CD on Penultimate Press)
- ~Interview segment with Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen & Mark Harwood~
- Henning Christiansen excerpt of Op.1984 (160C) Goodday, Mr Orwell, Green Ear-Year (Henning Christiansen Archive)
- Henning Christiansen excerpt of Op.201 L´Essere Umano Errabando, La Voca Errabando (Henning Christiansen Archive)
- ~Interview segment with Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen & Mark Harwood~
- Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen “The New Sound Of The Living Dead” (excerpt) SAVE THE NATURE – USE FLUXUS, The Box parking lot, Los Angeles (Henning Christiansen Archive)
- Henning Christiansen “The Reality is a Ghost in my Mind” (excerpt) Pentheselia (*forthcoming 2LP on Henning Christiansen Archive)
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