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Astor

Astor is the moniker of Mark Harwood, Australian publisher, event curator and sound artist who is now residing in London, United Kingdom. Under this guise he deploys a wide variety of techniques including field recording, musique concrete, electronics and spatialisation. All of these forms are approached with a sense of bypassing the cliches imbedded within in order to coerce a sound world which is simultaneously contemporary, foreign, beautiful, unsettling and engaging.

Astor is the moniker of Mark Harwood, Australian publisher, event curator and sound artist who is now residing in London, United Kingdom. Under this guise he deploys a wide variety of techniques including field recording, musique concrete, electronics and spatialisation. All of these forms are approached with a sense of bypassing the cliches imbedded within in order to coerce a sound world which is simultaneously contemporary, foreign, beautiful, unsettling and engaging.

The Aubergine Dream
Performed with Nell Peto on the occasion of her 12th birthday.  Also features appearances from Amelia Borg, Christine Borg, Alfred Schnittke, Edward Lawrenson and Rialzu.  Recorded at Cafe Oto, London on the evening of the 4th august, 2017 during the 2 day event "Fuck you wheres my sugar". Two nights around the themes of depression and hysteria curated by Lucy Stein and Mark Harwood.  Thanks to Shaun Crook for recording.
Astor
The fourth Astor offering presents itself as a limited cassette, intended to fill the vacuum prior to the next full-length LP expected to hatch in the year of 2018. A self-titled diary-esque offering, this collects recordings made in the UK and Europe throughout 2017 -- from a toilet on a train in France to a piece played on Henning Christiansen's piano on the island of Møn in Denmark. Here you'll embark on a journey of sound that travels through a vast terrain which holds itself together …
Lina in Nida
Mark Harwood's third album under his Astor moniker slips away from the obtuse atmospheres and concrete field recordings of Alcor and Inland (released on Graham Lambkin's Kye label in 2012 and 2013 respectively). Lina in Nida sits more in a melodic electronic framework covering a wide range of sonic and emotional states. "The East" initiates proceedings as a proposed anthem for Britain during a potential invasion by ISIS. Things soon move into the uncomfortably claustrophobic "The Landowners," wh…
Inland
Kye is proud to present Inland, the new LP by Clapton-based Astor. Advancing the cause of 2012's 'Alcor' LP, 'Inland' finds Mark Harwood and sometime collaborator Maja Larsson further complicating reason with dark and circuitous audio constructs. Inland' is sonically conceptualised through the meticulous choice of instrument used: ranging from an array of bells, gongs and ethno-percussion, alongside petrified piano melodies and a grinding organ. Accordingly, this is complemented by the use of T.…
Alcor
restocked!! Alcor is the debut LP by a new voice from the Australian wilderness. Hailing from Ferntree Gully, Victoria, the music of Astor has thus far been appreciated only via a string of barely-distributed CDRs. Alcor gathers together the prime of these micro-editions and presents the material as a seductive and puzzling new whole. Field recordings of humble organic activity bend against a foundation of discreetly processed electronics/piano, creating sonorities that are as undefinable a…
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