Inner Tube (Mark McGuire & Spencer Clark)
Mark McGuire is an incredibly talented player and songwriter, his work both in a solo capacity and with his lauded band Emeralds places him smack bang in the heartland of a great American sonic uprising. Creating incredibly rich and deep layered guitar works, McGuire has developed an entirely unique method of live looping, creating a network on tone, melody and freeform modulation that is both breathtaking and bewildering. He's a master of his craft and undoubtedly one of the central figures emerging from the American underground music scene.
Last year he appeared at Unsound Festival New York with his band Emeralds and in a special collaboration between Emeralds and Alan Howarth. This year McGuire returns to Unsound Festival New York to unveil the World live debut of a new project with Californian Charles Berlitz (better known as Spencer Clark from Monopoly Child and Skaters). Entitled Inner Tube the project is influenced by and made in tribute to old new wave/soft rock/surf bands from Australia and New Zealand. McGuire first started talking about the project last year noting "I'm really stoked for that one because it's way out-of-left-field style and really different than a lot of stuff I've been doing, and I think people are going to respond."
Inner Tube have just released their first recording "Witness The Reverie of a mind filtered through Tube" on Pacific City Sound Visions which features a tribute to the 1980's Australian surfer Mark Richards. Considering one of Unsound Festival's founders Mat Schulz is Australian you can see why this project had to make it's US debut at Unsound Festival New York. The new record is also garnering buzz from people like Pitchfork and the FADER just described it thus - "It’s a given that when you see Mark McGuire’s name pop up on a song, there’s going to be some gorgeous, intricate guitar running through the track. All of his work is infused with this sort of glittery soft focus. It is, first and foremost, mood music—made by one person and designed to be listened to alone as well. When he collaborates with others, it is always fascinating to see how he works his style into the framework of someone else. Most recently, he made a whole record with Charles Berlitz who is actually Spencer Clark from Skaters, the duo that includes James Ferraro as its other half. “MR” is a song for surfer Mark Richards, but like much of McGuire’s other work, it could also be about being heartsick at dusk, thinking about being a kid, general sadness, or space."
