Five Trips into Outer Worlds by Mark Dwane
Five Trips into Outer Worlds by Mark Dwane
Back in 2010 I created this list of my favorite Mark Dwane albums. Since his passing, I thought I would bring it to you again even though he’s released about 12 albums since then, many of them worthy of this list.
While so many electronic musicians headed off into the drone zone of sonic abstraction, Mark Dwane was an artist who still believed in the power of melody, the grandeur of a big crescendo and the stories held within a dramatic turn. His epic compositions have been part of Echoes from the very beginning and he’s had two CD of the Month picks. He released nearly 40 albums, but here are five of his best albums.
1- 2012
The world didn’t end in 2012, the last day of the Mayan calendar. Good thing because we got to hear this album. The track,”Skywatchers, ” is quintessential Mark Dwane, with a surging, filtered electronic rhythm sequence demarcated by strumming acoustic guitar and topped by swelling string-like synthesizers and some of Mark’s own patented sounds like an echoing glissando trumpet choir. Dwane makes effective use of environmental ambiences on songs like “The Sacred Tree” as very electronic sounding birds create stereo glissandos across his flute melody, blending into the echoes and rustles like a neon-lit jungle. The sound of rain mimics an electronic rainstick on one track and accompanies electronic droplets on another.
2-Other Worlds
This is Mark Dwane’s most recent album and it showed him moving in new directions with his guitar synthesizer, including actually sounding like a guitar on tracks such as “Other Worlds” and ‘Modal Logic.” But he still spins out those kinetic grooves, many of them generated, like much of his music from his guitar synthesizer. The Hawaiian slide guitar on “Haven” is an unexpected and refreshing touch
3- Paradigm Shift
Mark Dwane lush landscapes and warp-drive melodic ricochets on his fourth album. On the title track and “The Pleiadean Paradigm” he orchestrates a cathedral of electronic sound. Rhythms alternately charge and lope as Dwane masses electronic choirs and crystalline bells.
4 Angels, Aliens & Archetypes:
On his second album, Dwane conducts a super-orchestra that careens through his energized compositions. Dwane’s music is multi-layered and interwoven like a Persian kaleidoscope, with already intricate patterns transmuted and shaded as they drive through powerful rhythms and heroic melodies. His influences were still evident, with electronic echoes from the sequencer school of music from Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Michael Hoenig. But rather than imitate, he took the next step on pieces like “Saucers Over Nazca” which begins with a free-fall through a liquid prism before hurtling off into a percussive tribal dance. The title track is a monument of form and structure with churning, interlocked sequencers dancing in a mechanical ballet of counterpoint and polyrhythms. They, in turn, charge a heroic theme that reaches for the skies.
5 Nefillim
Don’t let the concept of an alien race that seeded the earth get in the way of this sweeping, kinetically charged album that has Mark’s patented screaming synth-guitar crescendos and those percolating, trawling through the spaceways rhythms.
This list is from 2010 and I would certainly add a few more to it, but if you haven’t discovered Mark Dwane, who left the planet on July 24, 2025, this is a good place to start.
Thanks for the overview. Will plan to listen.
His passing is very sad. He had such a brilliant way of taking his guitar and, inside his studio, turning it into an orchestra. All of the albums that you selected were excellent, as an honorable mention, I’d like to add The Sirius Link. Thank you so much for introducing Mark Dwane to my music collection.
Yes, The SIrius link is great. Remember that list is from 2010 so about 10 albums released after that.