“The work of Mark Trecka never sits still,” we wrote in October, “the Chicago-born artist and activist utilis[es] sound to explore a diverse set of styles and themes in a practice as inventive as it is ambitious.” Back then we were covering ‘Witch’s Hat’, a Halloween collaboration with Madeline Johnston (Midwife) and Doug Tesnow (An Heap) which used a post-punk aesthetic to blur the border between haunting and beautiful. “Moving,” as we put it, “from apparent minimalism into a gauzy atmosphere as though pushing through the layers of time itself.” The song was taken from Fool Signal, Trecka’s latest album which enlists a number of such collaborators to push his sound further, with Evan Hydzik, Andrew Petzold-Eley (Obelisk Ruins) joining Johnston, Tesnow and others as partners on the various tracks.
To close out the year, Mark Trecka has unveiled one final single from the album, ‘New Panthalassa’. Trecka originally recorded the track aged twenty, as part of the song ‘Panthalassa’, though revisits it here as a method of both processing of past traumas and celebrating the friendships and collaborations which have persisted across the years. An Heap appeared on the original and Tesnow joins again, helping build a bed of vintage drum machine, tapes, synth and bass guitar above which Trecka’s crooned vocals soar.
Fool Signals is out now and available from the Mark Trecka Bandcamp page.
Photo by Olivier Nemnom