Mark Organ

“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.

“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.

Beggars Arkive in conjunction with the Estate of Mark Lanegan, are honored to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Mark Lanegan’s acclaimed 2004 album Bubblegum. On August 23rd, we will release Bubblegum XX - a set of releases that include a remastered double LP edition of the original album and a 4XLP/3XCD release containing 40 remastered tracks, 12 of which are previously unreleased.

Beggars Arkive in conjunction with the Estate of Mark Lanegan, are honored to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Mark Lanegan’s acclaimed 2004 album Bubblegum. On August 23rd, we will release Bubblegum XX - a set of releases that include a remastered double LP edition of the original album and a 4XLP/3XCD release containing 40 remastered tracks, 12 of which are previously unreleased.

Mark Lanegan's first solo album, 1990's The Winding Sheet, was a darker, quieter, and more emotionally troubling affair than what fans were accustomed to from his work as lead singer with the Screaming Trees. The follow-up album, 1994 's Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, used The Winding Sheet's sound and style as a starting point, with Lanegan and producer/instrumentalist Mike Johnson constructing resonant but low-key instrumental backdrops for the singer's tales of heartbreak, alcohol, and dashed hopes. While The Winding Sheet often sounded inspired but tentative, like the solo project from a member of an established band, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost speaks with a quiet but steely confidence of an artist emerging with his own distinct vision. The songs are more literate and better realized than on the debut, the arrangements are subtle and supportive (often eschewing electric guitars for keyboards and acoustic instruments), and Lanegan's voice, bathed in bourbon and nicotine, transforms the deep sorrow of the country blues (a clear inspiration for this music) into something new, compelling, and entirely his own. Whiskey for the Holy Ghost made it clear that Mark Lanegan had truly arrived as a solo artist, and it ranks alongside American Music Club's Everclear as one of the best "dark night of the soul" albums of the 1990s.

Those who liked the moodier, more atmospheric material on the last Mark Lanegan Band offering, 2004's Bubblegum, will find much to enjoy on Blues Funeral – an album that has little to do with blues as a musical form. Lanegan has been a busy man since Bubblegum. In the nearly eight ensuing years, he's issued three records with Isobel Campbell, joined Greg Dulli in the Gutter Twins, guested on albums by the Twilight Singers and UNKLE, and was the lead vocalist on most of the last two Soulsavers offerings. Produced by Eleven guitarist Alain Johannes (who also fulfills that role here as well as playing bass, keyboards, and percussion), Blues Funeral finds Lanegan in a musically ambitious place.

Discerning an aesthetic thread through the Mark Pritchard discography was tough in 1996. Twenty years later, forget it. Around 2013, he evidently tired of thinking up a new alias with each expectation-confounding release and, under his birth name, initiated a trio of brief releases for the Warp label. Featuring drop-ins from Ragga Twins and Spikey Tee, the fully energized EPs moved through jungle, bass, juke, ragga, and grime. They provided no indication for the approach taken on Under the Sun, itself a stylistic manifold. The album begins with "?," a sorrowful and moving ambient piece. Given a low-key release in 2009, the track has been used by Mala to open DJ sets, and it serves a similarly cleansing purpose for its new home here, leading to a rolling Krautrock chorale that features the baleful, multi-tracked voice of Bibio…

Though Black Pudding marks the first time that singer Mark Lanegan and multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood have recorded together, it isn't the first time they've collaborated. The latter toured with the Gutter Twins, Lanegan's project with Greg Dulli. Garwood's name isn't as well-known to the general public as the singer's, but his reputation among musicians certainly is. He's worked with everyone from the Orb to Wire, from Wooden Wand to Sir Richard Bishop, from Josh T. Pearson to Kurt Vile. For those familiar with Lanegan's 2000s solo work, the moody nature of the material here will come as little surprise; let's face it, his voice is coated in darkness. That said, all but two of these songs – the lovely guitar instrumentals by Garwood that bookend the album – are co-writes. They range from spooky blues numbers such as "Pentacostal" and "Death Rides a White Horse," where the guitar is the primary instrument, to fractured, skeletal, nocturnal funk numbers such as "Cold Molly."