Mark Harwood – Two Actors CD

Pre-order. Out mid-November.

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