Original Mark Edwards, The
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The best kept secret in music

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"Rewind Tomorrow CD Review"

A good headphone record is a temporary residence. With "Headphone World," experimental pop act the Busy Signals provided the most fitting of 20th Century Boy come-ons: "You look so cute with your cans on." These days we're all alone in headphones; they're part of Generation iPod's uniform. We're a community, even though one of us hears Hoobastank while the other hears Norah Jones. "The Original" Mark Edwards must live in headphones, because he manages to sound both isolated and thoroughly engaged with infectious pop. Fortunately, Edwards is just as concerned with what's on the speakers, and he brings a brave new world to the listener with his comfortably spacious debut, Rewind Tomorrow. Edwards, a Susstones Records chum, knows a thing or two about skyrocketing. His former band the Domo Sound channeled Radiohead's aerial paranoia and landed in front of a national audience in 1998 when they won a college band search and played on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Edwards has since scaled down to solo proportions, recording in his basement studio and inviting a few friends over to play drums and vibes.
The cans may have shrunken to ear buds, but the tech-lite bleeps Edwards pans to the left channel are no less penetrating. His drowsy vocals snake in through the right ear. In the center, circular guitar and laptop spills crackle like a synapse before the nerves unwind. Rewind Tomorrow could be the Ambien of drug records. In his Eno-meets-ELO tableau "Sleepy Memories," remnants are "injected like bee stings" while dissonant harmonies provide the perfect cue for a somnambulist mambo. Edwards's 2001-inspired "Three Minutes to Impact" re-imagines a simple urban stroll as a slow-motion trek through an airport walkway. Edwards finally claims his own utopia with the jubilant "I Wish I Could See Your Film," on which he harmonizes with an echo out of Lyndsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road"; he's even sunnier on "Hooray!" which sends the listener into the streets with a buoyant "What a glorious day!"
- City Pages - Mpls, MN


"OME Interview"

It reads like a movie script: your college band becomes tipped for greatness four months into their career after winning a mail-in contest to perform on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," your band quickly becomes the toast of the town and you could easily be forgiven for thinking that a life of rock 'n' roll-abetted luxury is just around the corner. Then disaster strikes when, just three years after your big break, the band you lead implodes under the weight of its own expectations just after releasing its arduously labored over debut full-length. The name of the film, "The True Adventures of the Original Mark Edwards."

This isn't some bullshit "Almost Famous" remake we're dealing with here, it's what actually happened to Edwards, the former leader of local rock outfit the Domo Sound who's finally emerged three years after that band's untimely demise with a new record (the just out headphone stunner Rewind Tomorrow under the cheeky name The Original Mark Edwards) that will surely have some dubbing him the "next big thing" all over again.

"Even before the band broke up I started going down into my little basement studio messing around with looping vocals and that sort of stuff," explains Edwards, 30, as he attempts to trace the evolution of his little home recording project from hobby to full-fledged recording and performing entity. "This whole project started with me singing little melodies and throwing a guitar on it here and there. One thing led to another and I added a beatbox when I needed some drums and it kind of went from there. When the band was still going I was just kind of messing around, but after we broke up it became a bigger deal to me. I still didn't really know what I was doing, and I still don't really know, but I had enough material and I loved tracking so I just started working on this record."

Though it may have been born out of modest ambition, the record Edwards fashioned over the course of two years, Rewind Tomorrow, sounds as grand as anything his old group ever attempted. Eleven tracks meticulously sculpted in Edwards' home studio (with some slight production/instrumentation/mixing assists from local legend Ed Ackerson, former Domo bandmate Chrisopher Maciolek and Edwards' wife and children amongst a few others), Rewind Tomorrow may just be the best record yet to come out of the Twin Cities homemade pop scene.

Split evenly over its briskly running 11 tracks between semi-cheesy gadget pop with pixie-stick snorting pep ("Hooray!") and more contemplative chilled-out material ("Wish I Could See Your Film"), Rewind Tomorrow is an odd hybrid, able to use its core sound of looped lo-fi beats, mechanically stacked vocal and guitar overdubs and pristine keyboards to cast widely varying moods—it’s both silly and somber, playful and despondent … and exactly the record Edwards wanted to make.

"This project really just started out of my love of recording," claims Edwards, "it was all about just messing around and having fun. In my mind with the Domo Sound the reason we broke up by the end was that it wasn't fun anymore. We had the Conan thing happen early in our career and it just put all these unrealistic expectations in our head that were completely ridiculous. With this I just wanted to have a good time and fit it around all of my other normal life obligations."

Those obligations include two small children (ages 5 and 2) and a loving wife, and although many a man has found the balancing act between family and music impossible, it's a dual life Edwards cherishes (bringing his family so far in on the act that his wife snaps the press photos that prominently feature his kids). "I've never been a stereotypical scenester/rocker guy, so having a family has only been great for me," says Edwards beaming. "The Domo Sound was like another whole marriage and took up a ton of time, so as my daughter was getting older I missed her as much as she missed me. With this project now it works out great, bedtime for the kids hits and I can go to the basement and hit the studio. Having kids is just energizing too, it's pretty inspirational to have little versions of you just running around all the time."

If there's one thing that ties all the disparate bleeps and blips of the OME's beautiful headphone world together, perhaps it's that—a child like sense of wonderment and energy. Six years ago Edwards seemed headed for the big time and was shaking Conan O'Brien's hand on network television, a different man could easily be bitter at how things worked out, disappointed to be chatting with the Pulse of the Twin Cities and not Rolling Stone. Edwards, however, seems completely content.

"[Moving on after the Domo Sound broke up] was just a matter of stepping back and reevaluating my priorities and remembering what really brought me to music in the first place," claims Edwards as our interview winds to a close, "which was that I loved banging on pots and pans when I was 12. I used to bang on all - Pulse of the Twin Cities


"Conan O'Brien"

"I Bow to Them" -

on air January 1998 while introducing the OME's former band, The Domo Sound. - Late Night With Conan O'Brien


"Rewind Tomorrow CD Review 2"

For less guitar-driven but still upbeat pop, former Domo Sound frontman Mark Edwards will be at the Kitty Cat Klub tonight promoting his new CD, "Rewind Tomorrow." He's officially releasing the disc on Princess Records as the Original Mark Edwards, and it is indeed quite original. Edwards experimented with harmonious vocal loops and ambient synth parts as if he were Brian Wilson tinkering on Pro Tools. His many smile-piled lines such as, "Hooray! What a wonderful day," will test your level of cynicism, but kudos to the guy for not being just another depressed Thom Yorke wannabe.
- Minneapolis Star Tribune


"Shawn Walgren"

"This is a must-see band with a promising future in the music industry" - MTV Online


"OME Interview and CD Review"

Personnel: Mark Edwards on guitar, keyboards, drums, bass and pretty much everything else, with guests pitching in on various tracks.


Background: Edwards' first band, the Domo Sound, started big. After winning a college-band contest, the group played its fourth show ever in front of a national TV audience on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in January 1998. "During the commercial break, 20 seconds before the cameras were going to roll, (O'Brien sidekick) Andy Richter leaned over and said, 'You better not screw this up.' It was hilarious," says Edwards.



Typical band issues, coupled with the stress of topping the O'Brien appearance, led to the Domo Sound's end in the summer of 2001. Edwards then holed up in his basement studio, dubbed "The Monarchy Underground," and began noodling around with his instruments, looping bits of music and discovering songs among the chaos. "I would loop my vocals and guitar and work on as many harmonies as I could build up," says Edwards. "I realized it would be cool to do an entire project around the results."


Concept: Once Edwards had enough songs together, he recorded them during a weeklong session in 2002. The following spring, he handed them over to Polara guitarist/producer Ed Ackerson, who gave the numbers a polish. After further tinkering, Edwards' debut full-length, "Rewind Tomorrow," was ready, as was a new moniker, the Original Mark Edwards.


Transferring his basement symphonies to a live setting has proved a challenge for Edwards, who used opening slots for Polara, Dosh and Of Montreal to test his methods.


"There are so many technical issues, it makes the sound guy crazy," says Edwards. "It was good to have those shows for trial-and-error." So does that mean he has it down to a science now? "Well," he says with a laugh, "you know, I do and I don't. The thing about looping is that it's all being recorded live onstage. So things can definitely go awry."


Review: Fans of the Cosmic Americana vibe of bands like Grandaddy and Flaming Lips will find plenty of ear candy on "Rewind Tomorrow," as will acolytes of the genre-bending Welsh band Super Furry Animals.


Some of the slower numbers ("Life Everlasting," "Can You Believe?") bring to mind "OK Computer"-era Radiohead while the synth-pop ditty "Hooray!" travels in the same sonic, if not lyrical, territories as the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt.


Edwards' ear for layering and texture suit the record well, giving it a dreamy, narcotic feel. This probably isn't the disc to spin on your next late-night road trip.


Recording: Edwards' debut, "Rewind Tomorrow," is now available from Princess Records.


Gig: CD-release party with Basement Apartment and JAR at 9 p.m. today; Kitty Cat Klub, 315 14th Ave. S.E., Mpls.; $5; 612-331-9800.
- St. Paul Pioneer Press


"NPR Radio Broadcast (Transcript)"

Digital technology has helped spawn thousands of basement studios across the country. Singer songwriter Mark Edwards of Minneapolis has one. For Edwards, a father of two with a full time day job, having a basement studio has meant having an artistic life after the kids go to bed.



Minneapolis, Minn. — "I like when my dad plays music."



Five year old Adeline Edwards is one of her father Mark's biggest boosters. Which is good, because her dad often borrows her sound-making toys to record samples in his basement studio.



Mark Edwards, who as a performer goes by the name of "The Original Mark Edwards," lives what some would view a charmed life.



"I get home at 5:30 or 6:00 at night," he says. "Usually I have dinner, hang out with the kids until bedtime, which I try to do at 8:00 or 8:30. And then if it's a band night in my mind, I come down to my studio downstairs and just get cranking. Then it can be until midnight or 1 or 2 a.m. It depends on how influenced I am."



Edwards has been writing songs since he was a kid. When he was 13, he used a cheap, multi-track tape player to record them. He didn't start seriously pursuing music until college, when he and his friends formed "The Domo Sound."



The Domo Sound specialized in epic sounding, effects-driven space rock in the tradition of Radiohead. To the surprise of all the band members, The Domo Sound hit the big time after only a few coffeehouse performances.



"Four shows into our career we end up on Conan O'Brien, playing, because we entered a college band contest and we won," Edwards says.



The Conan O'Brien appearance probably set the bar too high for The Domo Sound. Edwards says the band members put a lot of pressure on themselves, set unrealistic goals and ended up imploding. It wasn't a very fun time, and Edwards' new CD, "Rewind Tomorrow," is his artistic response to that experience.



"When I started this project, I really wanted to say, you know, why do I do this? I did this when I was 13 because I really loved it, and I want to get back to that," Edwards says. "And so this project's a lot like that. When I feel like doing it I can do it, and it's all about just loving to do music again, and not having any pressure anymore."



Edwards adopted the stage name, The Original Mark Edwards, kind of as an inside joke. He had done a Google search on his name, and when thousands of Mark Edwards turned up, he decided to become the standard bearer of them all.



He's a man of interesting contrasts. His muttonchop sideburns and hip apparel say indie rocker, but he works as a financial analyst for a firm that develops senior-level business executives. He's a devout Christian, but he loves the spacey, psychedelic, drug inspired music of the '60s and early '70s. You can hear those contrasts on many of the 11 songs that make up Edwards' new CD.



"I'd say I almost have two lives in this project," he says. "One is the recorded life, one is the 'live' life."

Edwards' recorded life is similar to most pop musicians with digital basement studios. Like many other artists, Edwards uses recorded samples and loops continually repeating the same sound or rhythm, as a background texture.



"On the live thing, everything is looped, so I don't use any samples, I don't use anything pre-recorded at this point. I basically record a beat box or I record a guitar line or something. And then I loop on top of it, and then the whole song eventually builds up from the ground," says Edwards.



"From a live standpoint it's almost like a science experiment in a way -- because it could fall apart, and has fallen apart," he says.



Many of the songs on "Rewind Tomorrow" are short by Edwards' standards, and get to the point in a hurry. Most have a trippy, spacey feel, with studio techniques a la Beatles and soaring harmonies a la Beach Boys. It gives them a peaceful, almost lullaby, quality. It's music made for headphone listening. If there's an overriding theme, it's to stay in touch with the moment.



One song is an instrumental entitled "Three Minutes To Impact." It's Edwards' musical image of what a plane crash might be like. He incorporates samples of Icelandic flight attendants giving instructions on what to do in case of an emergency.



"The music really works well with that vibe of impending doom, and almost has a peace about it, which would probably play to my spirituality. Almost like, we're going down, it's going to be all right, that kind of thing."



There are thousands of basement studios in America, where a flood of music is being created. Mark Edwards doesn't worry about whether his music will stand out.



"For me it all comes down to the songs," he says. "There are a thousand great guitar players and one great songwriter. and as long as the songs are written really well, they could be produced a thousand different ways and they'd probably still come a - NPR - All Things Considered


"OME Interview and CD Review"

Personnel: Mark Edwards on guitar, keyboards, drums, bass and pretty much everything else, with guests pitching in on various tracks.


Background: Edwards' first band, the Domo Sound, started big. After winning a college-band contest, the group played its fourth show ever in front of a national TV audience on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in January 1998. "During the commercial break, 20 seconds before the cameras were going to roll, (O'Brien sidekick) Andy Richter leaned over and said, 'You better not screw this up.' It was hilarious," says Edwards.



Typical band issues, coupled with the stress of topping the O'Brien appearance, led to the Domo Sound's end in the summer of 2001. Edwards then holed up in his basement studio, dubbed "The Monarchy Underground," and began noodling around with his instruments, looping bits of music and discovering songs among the chaos. "I would loop my vocals and guitar and work on as many harmonies as I could build up," says Edwards. "I realized it would be cool to do an entire project around the results."


Concept: Once Edwards had enough songs together, he recorded them during a weeklong session in 2002. The following spring, he handed them over to Polara guitarist/producer Ed Ackerson, who gave the numbers a polish. After further tinkering, Edwards' debut full-length, "Rewind Tomorrow," was ready, as was a new moniker, the Original Mark Edwards.


Transferring his basement symphonies to a live setting has proved a challenge for Edwards, who used opening slots for Polara, Dosh and Of Montreal to test his methods.


"There are so many technical issues, it makes the sound guy crazy," says Edwards. "It was good to have those shows for trial-and-error." So does that mean he has it down to a science now? "Well," he says with a laugh, "you know, I do and I don't. The thing about looping is that it's all being recorded live onstage. So things can definitely go awry."


Review: Fans of the Cosmic Americana vibe of bands like Grandaddy and Flaming Lips will find plenty of ear candy on "Rewind Tomorrow," as will acolytes of the genre-bending Welsh band Super Furry Animals.


Some of the slower numbers ("Life Everlasting," "Can You Believe?") bring to mind "OK Computer"-era Radiohead while the synth-pop ditty "Hooray!" travels in the same sonic, if not lyrical, territories as the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt.


Edwards' ear for layering and texture suit the record well, giving it a dreamy, narcotic feel. This probably isn't the disc to spin on your next late-night road trip.


Recording: Edwards' debut, "Rewind Tomorrow," is now available from Princess Records.


Gig: CD-release party with Basement Apartment and JAR at 9 p.m. today; Kitty Cat Klub, 315 14th Ave. S.E., Mpls.; $5; 612-331-9800.
- St. Paul Pioneer Press


Discography

REWIND TOMORROW (debut full-length) - Princess Records (PR04CM01)

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

What's a full-time, day-job-working father of two supposed to do in his downtime after the kids go to bed? Well - beat box indie pop tunes, naturally! Starting out in his Minneapolis home studio in 2002, The Original Mark Edwards began looping beat box, vocal harmonies and guitars to create the unique pop soundscape the OME calls his own. While other looping artists often create ambient works, the OME builds beautifully crafted pop songs around beats created just seconds before. Harmonies are subtly worked in and soon a wall of sound conjuring up memories of the Beach Boys or ELO is bombarding the listener. A bit like a live science experiment, the OME's show is dangerous in that it can self-destruct at any time. This tension, along with each performance's unique spin, makes each show a must-see, must-hear event.

Mark Edwards was a founding member and writer for the seminal rock band, The Domo Sound. The Domo Sound released two album, This is Our E.P. (1999) and Right Brain (2001), and among many other achievements, gained national recognition when they appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien playing an Edwards original, "Motorboat, Accelerate."

Going it alone for the first time, Mark recorded most of Rewind Tomorrow in his home studio, dubbed "The Monarchy Underground," laying most of the album's foundation in a one-week period near the end of 2002. In the spring of 2003, the tracks were brought to Ed Ackerson (Polara, Susstones) at Flowers Studio to be mixed. Some complications in getting the CD released gave Mark a little more time to fine-tune the record and cut three new tracks, "20th Century Boy," "Hooray!," and "Whole World." The process culminated into an album, although more polished than the "science experiment" aspect of the OME's live show, containing eleven contagious tracks that you just can't help humming along with. For more information, please contact Krista Villinskis at Princess Records/Tinderbox Music - 612.375.1113. Or visit the OME website www.omeHome.com.