Mark Harwood – Two Actors CD
€13.00
Messiaen traded his goods for brain rot. Mark Harwood, the elusive Penultimate Press helmsman, slips into character again—plural, fractured, unreliable. Two Actors plays like a dialogue without a script: human versus machine, or one man arguing with his own shadow.
Unlike his first solo record, “A Perfect Punctual Paradise..” voices only mumble and stumble on occasion. Here the “Actor(s)” appear in a variety of forms; sincere, female, mocking, beautiful, journalistic, operatic and more. Digital fevers rise, only to be punctured by sudden bursts of sincerity – like songs for instance, or the sound of a dolphin spirited to the netherworld, on one occasion an infernal battle deep within an eternity machine presents itself in the guise of entertainment. This is an abandoned snowstorm where the intermission never ends. Harwood tries on the masks we never wear.
Two Actors is a score carved from algorithmic echoes, lonely walks, and something uncomfortably close to tenderness. A collective mind steeped in data of itself and externus, at once, disturbing, comic and humane.
Harwood’s compositions are strong, occasionally pop, or classical in their architecture, giving the whole thing a nutty touch, à la Ichabod Crane meets The Mad Hatter. Two actors revel in haunted humour amid a playful disjointed theatre of voices.
Two Actors is a dialogue with no script, but clear insight. I just love Harwood and the way he sees this thing of ours.
– Juho Toivonen, Finland, 2025
Reviews
Mark Harwood has always had a talent for making the room feel slightly unstable, as if the furniture might start talking back. On “Two Actors”, released via Akti Records, he doesn’t just lean into that quality – he sets it up as the central dramaturgy. This is not an album in the traditional sense so much as a muttering play performed by unreliable narrators, some human, some digital, all vaguely suspicious.
Harwood, best known as the quiet mastermind behind Penultimate Press, has long occupied a peculiar corner of experimental music where collage, musique concrète, spoken fragments and emotional ambushes coexist. Here, he splits himself in two – or perhaps admits that the split has always been there. The title is literal and metaphorical: voices argue, overlap, contradict, derail. One actor speaks, the other interrupts. Sometimes the machine takes a line; sometimes it forgets it entirely.
Musically, “Two Actors” thrives on productive clumsiness. Beats limp rather than march, melodies appear briefly and then seem embarrassed by their own presence. There’s a sense of form beneath the chaos – Harwood is far too composed to be merely messy – but it’s a form that enjoys tripping over its shoelaces. Think of a waltz that’s had one drink too many, or a radio play broadcast from a half-flooded basement.
What makes the album compelling is its emotional ambiguity. It’s funny, but not in a punchline way; funny like realizing too late that you’ve been talking to yourself in public. Tracks flicker between irony and sincerity, often within the same minute. A warped vocal line might sound mocking until it suddenly feels exposed, almost tender. Harwood has a knack for letting vulnerability leak through the cracks of digital processing, like warmth escaping from a poorly insulated room.
There’s also a strange theatrical intimacy at play. Listening to “Two Actors” can feel like eavesdropping on a rehearsal that was never meant to be heard, where the script is constantly rewritten by interference, feedback, and second thoughts. The references – to classical structure, to absurdism, to the ghost of radio art – are there, but they’re worn lightly, with a grin rather than a manifesto.
In the end, “Two Actors” doesn’t resolve its internal dialogue, and that’s precisely the point. It leaves you suspended between laughter and unease, wondering whether the album is poking fun at you, comforting you, or quietly stealing your lines. Harwood remains a master of this unstable theatre: mischievous, oddly humane, and fully aware that sometimes the most honest conversation is the one that never quite makes sense.
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