Closed today

By continuing your navigation on this website, you accept the use of cookies for statistical purposes.

Locust
The First Cause

The First Cause

Artists

Locust

Labels

Mysteries Of The Deep

Catno

MOTDLP017

Formats

1x Vinyl 12"

Country

United States of America

Release date

Oct 20, 2023

Genres

Ambient Electronic

Styles

For nearly 40 years, English producer Mark Van Hoen has been making challenging music that eludes easy categorization under his own name, as Locust, and in the groups Autocreation, Scala, and Drøne. While his output has skirted around the fringes of IDM, techno, trip-hop, ambient, drone, and electropop, it has mutated these genres' elements in distinctive ways, revealing a mind always questing for unprecedented sounds.

This is Mark Van Hoen’s ninth album as Locust, and an instant classic.

Drifting, hanging, holding. Hoping, seeking, searching. And then finding.

Mark Van Hoen's ninth album as Locust is a cosmic whisper, a tender touch, where candid songwriting commingles with the afterimage of trip-hop and jungle. Across eight tracks, spectral melodies dance between languid breakbeats, and a formless murmur drifts through the ether, seeking a common thread.

Layered in strata, "The First Cause" reveals itself anew with each listen. Delicate tones share space with bass weight. Drums crunch, and rhythms cascade. Voices loop and intone, bodiless. What at first seems melancholy, you may later find reoriented—toward promise.

We seek solace in each other, and we seek solace in sound. Kinship isn't easy to come by. When a record offers its kind embrace to us as this one does, without reservation, we should take heed.

Written, performed and produced by Mark Van Hoen
© Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd
℗ 2023 Mark Van Hoen under exclusive license to Mysteries of the Deep
markvanhoen.com

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, NY
Photography by Grant Aaron
Design by Gabriel Benzur
Words by Chris Zaldua

Media: Mi
Sleeve: M

£20*

*Taxes excluded, shipping price excluded

VAT will be added for UK buyers at the checkout shipping stage. 
Items for EU and UK buyers will be sent from within your customs zones where possible. For worldwide B2B distribution pricing please email us at distribution@spacecadets.world

A1

Three Suns Of Lanuvium

A2

γ Vel

A3

Sea Tides

A4

Spindle Flames

B1

Tell Me

B2

She Knows

B3

OX-HO

B4

Miriam

Other items you may like:

Claudio Prc

Unda

After the A/V performance at Up To Date Festival back in 2022, Claudio PRC’s “Unda” project is going to be released as LP on vinyl and digital next September 2023.Claudio PRC’s upcoming ambient album is a sonic journey through ethereal landscapes and intimate atmospheres. Drawing inspiration from the waves and their movement, “Unda” (in Sardinian native tongue “wave”) evokes a sense of calmness and introspection. Throughout the whole piece, Claudio PRC creates a blend of meticulously crafted organic and synthetic elements that seamlessly integrates together, showcasing his versatility as an artist and his commitment to exploring all facets of electronic music. With its textured layers, this work offers a soothing and reflective musical experience, inviting the listener to escape into a world of contemplation and meditation.

William Selman

The Weather Indoors

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅Portland, OR-based multimedia artist William Selman returns to Mysteries of the Deep with his third album for the label. Drawing on influences such as David Toop, Beatriz Ferreyra, Elizabeth Waldo, and David Behrman, “The Weather Indoors” melds live and synthesized instrumentation, field recordings, and digital processing techniques in a new, more melodic and approachable direction.Immersive site recordings open into melodic woodwinds, orchestral instrumentation, bass guitar, gongs, and vibraphone. Borrowing from the anthropologist Tim Ingold’s concept of “inversion,” this widescreen staging cuts immediately to the core of the project: the way human beings use the faculty of imagination to aestheticize their built surroundings with architecture, images of distant locales, and domesticated flora and fauna to contain the anxiety for the natural world that surrounds human life. A clear peak in Selman's extensive catalog, “The Weather Indoors” captures his work at a moment expanding his musical and aesthetic project: Neither genre ambient nor musique concrète, but a unique sound world dense with conceptual play and moments of more traditional harmonic beauty.“We are contaminated by our encounters: they change who we are as we make way for others. As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds—and new directions—may emerge. Everyone carries a history of contamination; purity is not an option.” —Anne Lowenhaupt-Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World

Matti Bye

Between Darkness and White Snow

Written, recorded and produced by Matti Bye in Fårö, Sweden 2022 The recordings were made on a 1926 Steinway Grand Piano through the EMS Synthi A, recorded onto tape with Nagra IV S. Photography by Matti Bye Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome“The prolific Swedish pianist and composer Matti Bye has long been associated with Northern Electronics, appearing on well-enumerated compilations and collaboration-rich works. This is the first time he presents his own full-length recording with the label.'Between Darkness and White Snow' captures Bye's elemental radiance in four vignettes. Recorded on a 1926 Steinway Grand Piano through an EMS Synthi A, 'Between Darkness and White Snow' renders the perplexity of polarity with a grave assembly of textural phenomena and lyrical figures. As ephemeral harmonic mazes wilt into subdued distortion, we are left with a tentative invitation to gaze into the pooling material of Bye's compositions.”

Jo Johnson

The Wave Ahead

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ❌What is the sound of feeling?In physics, we conceive of sound as waves. Vibrations, undulations, physical manifestations: heard but not seen. Borne by the body, but interpreted in the brain.Within ourselves, we perceive emotion as waves, too. Rolling in, rolling out: tidal, even. In moments of violet intensity, the depth of our feeling crashes upon us like surf, rip currents on a corporeal beach.Worlds apart, but waves in kind. For musician and composer Jo Johnson, the veil between is diaphanous indeed. What you hear is what you feel. Listen and uncover.

Hems

Chaotic Affair

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅Titrate is a platform for the publication of high-resolution sonic pieces, set out on a path of continual research and exploration. TITR001 comes from hems, pressed to 180g vinyl housed in reverse board print.Spread across five tracks, the release transits a number of spaces - from the post-inertia stirrings of "Chaotic Affair", to the cutting and more austere drone layout of "One". Cosmic tech broadcast "Beautiful weekend with friends" is a fizzing metamorphosis that melts and mutates itself into "Switching Gears", a darker and more liquid environment. The final track "Stain" concludes the release with a musique concrète touch.With an overall meditative albeit experimental tone, this package is replete with rich textural qualities luring the listener into auditory immersion.

Gunnar Jónsson Collider

S.W.I.M.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅Icelandic musician Gunnar Jónsson Collider debuts on A Strangely Isolated Place with an expansive trip through six fictional environments, brought further to life through an accompanying video by artist Arna Beth.Inviting escapism through detailed, glacial textures, S.W.I.M. elevates a traditional beatless spectrum into a first-person narrative, moving across burning wastelands, miles-high sundown, a dizzying night sky, subterranean exploration, and more beautiful, natural phenomena. Subtle changes in tone and texture across each of the six environments provide a signal of the destination’s energy and the intended perception of the traveler. At times, elated and dwarfed by nature’s surrounding grandeur. Other times, bestowing a sense of apprehension and unknowing.Best absorbed through the accompanying visual album by fellow Icelandic digital artist Arna Beth, S.W.I.M. is an immersive jump into a majestic sci-fi world, placing you front and center in both sound and visual.Mastered by Franceso Fabris, S.W.I.M., will be available on limited edition 12” and digital.