And what are the gods up to? They’re going and going on and on. In the case of Mark McGuire, this means they’re looping and layering and looping and layering. For four or five years, Mark McGuire has released music in quiet constancy. First, on CD-r and cassettes, with his band Emeralds and also solo, all in all more then 30 releases (who’s still counting at that number, anyway?). His official debut, Living with yourself, was released at Editions Mego last year, followed by the 2-and-a-half-hours long compilation of his works, A Young Person’s Guide To Mark McGuire. Both releases show a young musician with his very own way of expressing himself – sometimes he uses his guitar, sometimes the synthesizers, sometimes he has both things rotating at the same time and thereby creates intense emotional panoramas, piece by piece. The musician from Cleveland, Ohio, still sticks to this method on his new album, Get LostÂ. But things have changed in terms of content. While Living with yourself was an introverted, quasi-nostalgic confrontation with his childhood and youth, Get Lost is coined by a world-affirming openness. Living with Yourself was a memory, whereas Get Lost is much more of a healing and optimistic glance into the future. The album of 41 minutes is basically split into two parts (on vinyl even physically separated into the a-side and b-side). At the center of the first part’s five tracks, there is the track Alma – its melody is picked up later again as Alma (Reprise), and the line »It must resolve,/ we try and evolve« can be classified as the very first evidence of vocals in Mark McGuire’s repertoire. This first half is generally characterized by guitars, the tracks seem to be much more actual songs instead of sketches when it comes to their lengths and arrangements. You’ll just need to listen to the title song and be instantly astonished. The other half consists of only one track, Firefly Constellations, and it’s mostly characterized by synthesized sounds. The 20-minutes track is much more of a meditation, a stroll into the day, warm, sparkly, clever. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day. This great new world is huge and Get Lost is yet another argument for the god to remain in Olympus.
Get Lost
