Wednesday 22 May 2013

Mank - Gutta-percha

Following the new Skinflick release that we highlighted a few weeks back, here's another brand new release that we here at Turquoise Coal would like to draw your attention to.


Mank is the ambient electronic project of Ben Powell, based in North Wales.
Ben has been recording as Mank since 1998 releasing “home made” CDs on his Mankymusic label. Influenced by nature and maths the music is computer based, combining field recordings with real and virtual instruments. Ben is known for using some exclusive recording locations - two releases (Isbjorn and Ambergris) were recorded whilst on board a Russian polar research ship at the north pole, most of the Mank albums were born at sea.

Ben says "The majority of this album was written on a Canadian icebreaker on the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska - for my day job I work on ships making oceanographic measurements and as such I spend a lot of time bobbing around at sea near the North Pole. Making music lets me escape to my own world away from the ship but I hope that the beauty of the location comes through in my music, there are a lot of field recordings embedded in the mix."

The full 53'49" album is available free from Ben's SoundCloud site here and comes highly recommended to all fans of Arctic electronica!

1  Cyanosis
2  Heliopolis
3  Precession
4  Rheya
5  Moloch
6  Proteus
7  Cwmorthin
8  Systaltic
9  Eglwyseg
10  Dysthymia
11  Erebus and Terror