Mark Harris / JOHN 3:16 – Procession
Mark Harris / JOHN 3:16 – Procession
Alrealon Musique
Release Date: 03/03/23
Running Time: 46:50
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Greetings, dear friends. It is I, Dark Juan, and I have (in meatspace, anyway) somehow ended up as a professional in my career of wrangling recalcitrant young ladies and gentlemen, quite without realising how I have done this. The people I work for have, for some unaccountable reason, decided that I should be in charge of other adults. Even as far as my now having to interview other adults with a view to chucking them at the kids we look after.
This is not going to end well.
Quite apart from the sudden outbreak of impostor syndrome I now have (having never been off the bottom rung of the ladder ever before) there is a somewhat crushing sense of responsibility that I hope I’ll get over soon. I mean, which idiots think I am mature enough to wrangle adults effectively? I’m sure you have all read lots of the previous five years of frothing output I have committed to the ether and can only agree that I am clearly a six-year-old with language development issues in the body of an adult with an incipient alcohol problem and a sheer disregard of authority.
I am now the authority. Holy fuck.
None of the above has absolutely anything to do with the music I am currently subjecting my headspace to, being a collaboration between Mark Harris and JOHN 3:16 and released by Alrealon Musique. Full disclosure here – I have never heard of Mark Harris or JOHN 3:16 before and I chose this record simply because the description in the list of albums available for review at Ever-Metal Towers had Industrial next to it. Anyone who is familiar with my musical map will know that Dark Juan loves himself a bit of Industrial music. However, “Procession” is not pure Industrial – it is something rather more delicious.
Opening with the title track, the album slowly fades into the consciousness of the listener and builds to a coruscating wall of sound that batters the brainpan as much as it delights. It is slow moving, yet not ponderous. It’s more like the controlled, sinuous creeping of an apex predator rather than the slothful languor of a… a… sloth. Yeah, I should have thought about that metaphor a bit more before committing it to the keyboard.
This kind of dangerous, snake-like groove continues on the second tune (the record is instrumental [emphasis on the mental] throughout) ‘Cold Like The Stars’, giving the music a freezingly cold, expansive feel, yet also managing to make you feel like you’re basking in the radiation of a nearby, newly minted star cluster. The music of Mark Harris and JOHN 3:16 is not a comfortable place – it has the harshness of an Industrial spine, melded with the introspection and navel-gazing of Shoegaze and the expansiveness and mellowness of Ambient music, all combined into a wide-eyed, empty-staring whole – like the music is meditating to rid itself of the bloodlust and rage that lurks beneath the surface and sticks its fanged little face up to remind you all that it is still here and it still wants a mouthful of flesh.
The vibe changes on ‘He once made us tremble_He once inspired awe’ where a guitar chord (just one) builds and builds and builds upon layers of distortion until it becomes uncomfortable to listen to and a throbbing Industrial backbeat gives a sense of purpose and not a little paranoia to the piece. It really is a spine-tingling thing and quite took the breath of your favourite ersatz Metal hack away, to the point where Mrs Dark Juan was concerned enough to ask whether I was alright, seeing as I had gone all rigid and I was covered in goose pimples.
The goose pimples made a return on ‘When The Lord Took My Hand’, another tune that is not encumbered with any sense of urgency. The experience is not unlike watching the slow calving of an iceberg from the parent glacial shelf. It is long, drawn out, incipient violence dressed in fine velvet, the menace creeping through the softly swirling music with harsh guitar and electronic roaring before descending back into languid, flowing, liquid ambience.
If you are a fan of the kind of polished, heavy Industrial purveyed by the likes of Stabbing Westward, or Ministry (to be fair, there is an influence from early Ministry in the music. Think “The Land of Rape And Honey”, “Twitch” and “With Sympathy” with their Electropop influences) or early Pitch Shifter, you may not enjoy Mark Harris and JOHN 3:16. If you are a fan of the angst and pain and massive (almost Phil Spector-like) walls of sound of Swans, the epic soundscapes of Boards Of Canada, the Ambient, nebula-like swirling of Air and The Orb and the pulsating Industrial heartbeat of “Slateman / Cold World” era Godflesh, all combined into an uncomfortable and challenging miasma of sounds where harsh aural violence is at war with the swoopiness, calm and serenity of Ambient music then this record is so far up for street it’s in your house staying for tea and biscuits and playing with your dog.
To summarise then, if you want a jaw-dropping, colossal wall of sound hitting you directly in the guts and turning you into chunky salsa, you aren’t getting it. If you want a war of sounds and ambience colliding and turning into new and expansive forms, then you’re gonna dig Mark Harris and JOHN 3:16’s collaboration on this album. The production on the record is fucking marvellous as it plays tricks with sounds and elements of the music, sometimes the guitar snapping angrily at your face, sometimes the cymbals turned up in the mix to such an extent you risk nosebleeds and systolic collapse, sometimes a cosseting, enveloping swirliness holding you close and warm and overwhelming anything else… it’s fucking wonderful. This is an album of subtlety rather than out and out aggression. And that, my friends, makes for a listening experience that is as visceral as it is relaxing. It’s music as a narrative, not as a standalone piece. It has a story, but it is YOU that is the storyteller…
I need a lie down.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Mark Harris and JOHN 3:16 9/10 for a magnificently wide-ranging album. I took a mark off because I feel that their music will not gain the audience it deserves and although I love the fuck out of it, not everyone will.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Procession
02. Cold Like The Stars
03. He once made us tremble_He once inspired awe
04. Men of Sand
05. When The Lord Took My Hand
06. We Walk Across The Rooftops
07. Hades_Unseen
LINE-UP:
Mark Harris – Live Electronics, Sound Processing.
Philippe Gerber also known as JOHN 3:16 – Guitars, Bass, Drums, and Moog Pedals.
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
