For the last twenty-five years or so, Mark Beazley's Rothko has been an ever-evolving beast with a lot of this progression due to a number of carefully considered collaborations. This latest album involves old friend, Welsh composer Steve Parry. Steve's youthful memories of his mother playing the church organ invests a sepulchral air top his keyboard ruminations, but tempered with a metallic abstraction.
Rothko
12 posts
Their 2016 album release A Young Fist Curled Round A Cinder For A Wager was a startling journey through a hard Northern life, the ups and downs of the protagonist rendered in vivid detail by Johny and then instrumentally brought to life by Mark and James. It gave Rothko a new lease of life and certainly seems to have been mutually beneficial, with Mark undertaking duties in the touring Band Of Holy Joy.
Trace The latest Rothko release, initially a cassette through Jukebox Heart and now a download through Trace, finds Mark Beazley in an even more contemplative mood than last year’s Make Space Speak. Spread over six tracks and forty minutes, there is far less reliance on the bass as rhythmic instrument […]
Trace It is always a pleasure to learn of new Rothko material and this return is even more welcome considering it has been over two years since the Refuge For Abandoned Souls album. This first post-lockdown release thankfully contains none of the confusion and despair that has dogged some performers […]
Trace Eternally keeping his unique flame alive and forever pushing the sound somewhere fresh, Rothko‘s Mark Beazley is an irregular collaborator, but always uses the opportunity to discover something unexpected. This is his first since 2016’s full length A Young Fist Curled Round A Cinder For A Wager, and here the […]
Trace It still amazes me after twenty years or so how Mark Beazley can still make the bass guitar sound so different and vital across his various releases as Rothko. It feels like a personal crusade, a one-man (sometimes with help — Johny Brown, Michael Donnelly) to keep that cavernous […]
Trace It is clear from the title of the album, the tone of the cover imagery and some of the track titles that Mark Beazley and Michael Donnelly may not be treating us to another blissful series of plangent, bass heavy soundscapes. Blurred images of police lines and war shots […]
Trace It has been nearly twenty years since we first marvelled at the extraordinary sounds and textures that three gents could elicit from bass guitars. Catching them in support of Appliance was a revelation and following Mark Beazley‘s mercurial career has been both fascinating and frustrating. I haven’t heard much since […]
Trace From the opening strum and distinctive twang of Mark Beazley and Michael Donnelly‘s twin bass strings, Discover The Lost sweeps up the listener in its warmly-curving arms, holds on tight and soothes the cares of the worlds outside away. This it does over the course of the next ten instrumentals with […]
London 24 March 2004 A bit like starting a notebook backwards, I rush in after taking a stupidly slow and expensive cab ride, barely in time to see the last beautiful few moments of Rothko. Theirs is a sound I can recognize from way down the stairs as I run […]
London 21 March 2001 In tow with the usual Krautrock London posse I arrived at The Scala just in time to hear lots of talk about how a lot of people have not been here since it was a infamous cinema. Though I never saw it in its glory, the […]
The Borderline, London 9th November 1999 A night at The Borderline, a night for Americanism. We arrived too late to hear the first set, a band called Kenny Process Team, so no insights there apart from the appropriate(d) soundtrack feeling their last couple of songs gave me as I took […]