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Run by Mark Harwood / Astor, Penultimate Press operates in a wide variety of unusual approaches to sound and song releasing both new unheard underground alongside crucial reissues.
1. Every musician, and especially the one that analyses the context of the situation they are in and draws inspiration from it, had some sort of point of beginning and inspiration that went with it. What do you think was the starting point of your musical path?
Ground zero was getting a train set for Xmas when I was 9 or so and it failed to work when assembled. One of my sisters received a radio which I then turned to instead. When fiddling around with the dial the first music that appeared was Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture show. I loved it. I was hooked.
1.2 What other important stops were there on this path?
Weird late night music shows on the two Australian national television stations, ABC and SBS. One show, The Noise, played the entire Sogo Ishii film about Einstürzende Neubauten, 1/2 Mensch. That completely freaked me out and I’ve tried to repeat that experience since, as most do with their origin stories. I like to think I have moved from my instantly ingrained initial shock to a personal journey into different areas. But! As a young person I picked up a cheap Led Zeppelin cassette from a local market. I took it home, I played it. I hated it. I randomly picked up the Public Image Limited album Flowers of Romance and it terrified me. I still have that one. Once I went to a record store which had an abundance of cut out copies of Travelogue and Reproduction, the first two albums by The Human League. I liked their album Dare, so I picked them up without knowing anything about what was within, the covers were odd to me. On listening I had no idea what on earth this sci-fi grey matter as music was. More shocks. I had a classical music binge, I think Shostakovich was the initial one. The first movement of the 8th Symphony still resides with me today. That exquisite slow build to hysteria is wonderful. Then the modern stuff came my way: Varese, Cage, Nancarrow. I recall going to my first record fair and picking up The World of Harry Partch, Yoko Ono’s Fly and Brainticket’s Cottonwood Hill (recommended by the seller based on the other two purchases). Heading back home and subsequent needle dropping I now knew something deeply strange was going on, in culture, in history, and I never looked back on this perception really. I never stayed with pure experimental music, Public Enemy had such an impact hip hop is explored to this day. I’ll always adore Giacinto Scelsi and that Cro Magnon record. Dom’s Edge of Time was discovered and like a tattoo is one for life, unlike a tattoo it can’t be erased. Speaking of Shostakovich, later came Galina Ustvolskaya, her Composition No.2 was a real shock. Stockhausen’s Licht, live. It took me years to fall for Neil Young, but I eventually did and he remains on a high pedestal. The first LP by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the first 45 of the follow up, Your Funeral Your Trial, have travelled alongside me since they were first birthed. I listened to the latter again this week in fact. The album ‘The Thief Next to Jesus’ by Ka released in August year is likely the most compelling record I’ve heard this year. What a remarkable achievement that is. I tend to lean towards the highly singular, honest and unfathomable (how did they do that?) in music. I like to explore just how far the human experience can be stretched by means of expression. Pure sound rarely crackles for me.
2. Also for you - it was the decision to start with your own label - how did it start?
Always by accident. Something comes my way and I have a desire for more people in the world to have access to it. With the case of Penultimate Press it was the writings of Graham Lambkin. He sent me a small run self published collection of writings when I ordered his Salmon Run CD from him. I loved them. So haunting, engaging and strange. I simply asked him if I could make a higher profile publication of these so more people could encounter them. He said yes. Following the publication of a collection of Lambkin’s writings a snowball gently formed, gradually rolling down the hill, entering a forest, prior to turning left onto an uncertain highway. I am a believer in the fact that the act of doing a single thing always leads to another thing. Often good things. A lot of Penultimate Press releases have come about by accident. The recently released El Jardín de las Matemáticas LP formed as such; my friend Alvaro, who lives in Chile, sent me some rough recordings he’d been making with another pal in Chile and a friend of theirs from Argentina. I liked the recordings, not all but parts and I saw some potential. I love playing around with sound so I took to these original recordings bringing about a vague collaboration. I sent some rough material back to Alvaro who bounced back ideas and further recordings which brought about an LP never really intended to be. A forthcoming release on the label for next year also came about by chance whereby another friend sent a recording of his at the exact time I was working on something and I did not listen to it and simply downloaded and placed his track on top of the one I was working on. It blended so well. Some slight edits and mixing but the overall thing is the result of this happy accident. I love accidents. The label was and is still an accident.
2. 2. With ever changing circumstances as far as society and politics is concerned, what is a compass guiding you through it? How do you see those changes in your life as a musician, producer, publisher?
I approach all and any changes with curiosity and caution. The world has always been in flux and the acceleration today was inevitable, but you do have to keep your eye on things. As a musician, producer and publisher there’s always inner and outer turbulence to the many upheavals and sharp turns such endeavours condure. These recent years have not been a breeze for anyone but I can’t help but observe humanity for all its flaws. The recent destruction of intellect via media both adored and despised has been fascinating/shocking to observe. The ongoing march for long term destruction for short term gain is already biting, but these clowns keep fishing. This perspective is, of course mine, someone from ‘The West’. It increasingly looks like we bet on the wrong horse. The political infighting by the ‘left’ in recent years looked to me like a digital reconstruction of the Shah’s Iran, or indeed the Stasi of the DDR whereby the state relied on the individuals to spy on and ‘dob in’ their own neighbours citizen’s in order to ‘catch the culprits’ whilst sowing the wonderful seeds of paranoia and provide exquisite distraction whilst they had the means of carrying on with their own dastardly deeds outside and above such empty, or rather self destructive vigilantism. I just keep going on with what I do, avoiding certain bricks thrown my way, leaping over the tumult whilst taking to task to the tools they lay before us.
3. Every artist works within a certain modal using their instruments. How has your relationship with your instrument changed over time?
I don’t play anything. I know my mind well, but also not. It’s this dichotomy that can on occasion stumble on gold, or bronze. Both are fine. Earlier this year I witnessed an online meltdown adjacent to the advent of AI music programmes in one corner of the experimental community. One artist posted an exclamation whereby they had prompted such a programme to make a work in the style of their work. They were shocked, repulsed and ultimately terrified that the results were so alike to their own. When expressing this online the comments were flooded with hate, panic and rage (standard I know but bear with me). It kept happening, week after week, either panic or snarky remarks at how stupid and ‘off’ the results of the prompts were. A dialogue on the evils of this new technology and/or the peaks of the human endeavor that no non human could better. I will not get into any of those debates but the utter dismissal and rejection of this new ‘thing’ I found baffling. It was only in (my) recent memory that the Mini Disc came along and Rik Rue was using this new tool to see how to dismantle the original intent and distort the result. How did the once confident become so scared? It’s just another tool you fool.
Mark Harwood - ‘The humans are the ones hallucinating’ acrylic paint & pens, spray paint and calligraphy ink on paper 2024
4. What is the scope, points of interest for you when it comes to choosing the records to publish for you?
A unique idea, outlook, approach. Nothing more. No drone, no electronics, no fancy setups. Do not mention who you have collaborated with; I do not care. Do not boast about having releases on a multitude of labels; I do not care. Do not talk of ‘sound’, I do not care. Gently plant a truly surprising idea on my lap. It is there you will find my ears. Following this it has to feel equally potent after repeated listens, and if new magic appears on these subsequent listens that’s a big plus. I really just like to encounter things I never have prior.
5. How are you feeling about collaborating with others - musically?
Love it. The faults in my own mind can often be pleasantly redirected by others. I am very aware of my own limitations and it’s always beneficial and rewarding to work with others and learn more about you by observing them. Of course this would not work naturally with any random one on the streets of earth but the alignment of the community in certain cultures allows for human matter to encounter another which lends itself to both the joyous and learned on occasion.
Musically? Remind me.
6. Ever changing landscape of musical distribution is pretty difficult to be dependent on. What are your insights on it and how does it work for you now?
It’s become more difficult. I get despondent how a once underground self supporting network has now co-opted systems they once fought against. I refer to the star systems whereby artists are now ‘famous’, agencies dominate who play the festival circuits, media hypes the same old vetrans, new releases promoted on a daily basis bullying you to buy said artefact. Just chill fckrs, I know what I like, I will find it and I will take it under my mind wings in my own time. I appreciate you exposing it to me, but let me make up my mind and stop coercing me, please. All moves so fast there is utterly no consideration of potential longevity, no nuance or deeper exploration of a particular output. Or there is this weird forced longevity whereby the work screams how good I am at being slow and profound. Nein danke. I’d rather watch the party die. Phrases like ‘holy grail’ are constantly applied to anyone that poured water down a horn instrument in 1973. The shadow of the archaeological pedestal eclipsing the breathe of today. The historical glow as boring capital smothering new hope. I could go on.
7. Plans for the future?
There’s movements in a book each by Graham Lambkin and Tim Goss, both of The Shadow RIng. An utterly incredible recording by Sebastian Jörgensen will see the light of day and a cassette release from Oliver Chapman & Phoebe Eccles is being finalized now for a February release. On a personal level I am working on an album that could also be seen as a representation of an LP I could make.
I hope to read Don Quixote and buy a new duvet.
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