Audiopile Review: There’s a whole world of post-glitch electronic music out there waiting to be discovered. In the years after labels like Milles Plateaux, Mego, and Raster Noton pioneered the early-2000s clicks-and-cuts aesthetic, a whole under-the-radar scene toiled in obscurity. Labels like Häpna (run by the phenomenal Swedish post-rock group Tape) and Apestaartje (run by US duo Mountains) developed a sound that combined digital and acoustic elements in a way clearly influenced by Fennesz and Gastr Del Sol. Perhaps Canada’s most notable contributor to this scene was Edmonton’s Mark Templeton. Like many glitch and post-glitch artists, Templeton just kinda kept going in the face of apparent public indifference. Now, some of us finally seem to be catching up with artists like him. ‘Two Verses’ is perhaps Templeton’s most high-profile album to date, coming, as it does, via Jan Jelinek’s ever-reliable Faitiche label. And it’s well worth your attention. Built mostly from decaying tape loops, this will obviously appeal to fans of William Basinski’s ‘Disintegration Loops’ series. But these compositions are more compact and structured than you might expect (specifically, each piece has a two-part structure, hence the album title). They are also gorgeously evocative, with a powerful sense of fading, ambivalent nostalgia. Mark Templeton is one of those exceptional artists who has always deserved more attention than was generally given. It’s great that he’s found a home on Jelinek’s label. Faitiche family members Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi both contribute to this album, which is very much aesthetically in line with their own work. Yep, there’s a whole world of post-glitch electronic music out there waiting to be discovered, and this is a great place to start.

Mark Templeton is a Canadian media artist and the founder of Graphical, an audiovisual label dedicated to publishing his own musical and image-based experiments. Mark’s audio compositions are constructed from reel-to-reel tape loops and sampled cassettes that are contrasted with contemporary sound techniques. In his published photobooks, he incorporates his own 35mm pictures and found images, focusing on intangible fantasies and realities. During his audiovisual performances, he utilizes digital instruments while projecting his own photographs, VHS footage, Super 8 film, and other sampled video. Mark Templeton’s reinterpretation of outdated media as musical instruments makes him a compelling artist for the Faitiche label roster. For his debut on Faitiche, he browsed his old hard drives and invited Andrew Pekler to listen through and co-produce a selection of Mark’s unreleased works. The compositions act as a series of snapshots: a look back at a decade of archived sounds, re-envisioned and re-imaged for Faitiche. The album contains nine tracks that follow an AB song structure. Each piece begins with verse A, transitions into verse B, and then ends. This simple formula creates a dichotomy that is also present in Mark’s diptych photographs, featured in the artwork. Throughout the album, both juxtaposition and inherent connections are simultaneously at play. One way or another, Two Verses provides a beginner’s guide to Mark Templeton’s highly idiosyncratic catalog.