Mark Trecka has the uncanny ability to make music that is grating, unhinged, and noisy, yet compulsively listenable. In the glorious mire of his sonic collages lie a beating heart and warm melodies. While this juxtaposition was in full display on his 2024 album, The Bloom of Performance, Trecka seems to be doubling down on his latest, Romance Wake Naming.
Described on his website as a singer, sound artist, and writer, Trecka has collaborated with Paul Barker, Midwife, Susan Alcorn, Audra Wolowiec, Ben Babbitt, Obelisk Ruins, and countless others. Several of these artists contribute to the new album, which is described on his Bandcamp page as music that “lives in the hinterlands between heavily experimental trip-hop/illbient and a kind of dreamy industrial art punk”.
One of the more distinct aspects of Trecka’s music is his singing voice, a desolate croon that falls somewhere between David Bowie and Scott Walker. There’s a distinct punk energy to his music, and the industrial boom of the opening track, “Rumors of Survival” bears this out, as it often seems on the verge of collapsing under its own weight. There are also subtle shifts of light and shade in the music, with “Wake Dance Romance” approaching traces of pop song structure (albeit the kind favored by the likes of, say, Ministry‘s Alain Jourgensen). Trecka himself may get tired of the Bowie comparisons, but I can’t help thinking that if Bowie kept scratching his experimental/industrial itches, it may sound a lot like this record.
Elsewhere, the vocal samples and cut-up techniques on “Sex Pattern Death Pattern” give the track a mysterious warmth not often present in most experimental music. “First Pain” uses a trip-hop beat as its basic structure, while Trecka’s croon is full of naked emotion and spoken-word samples add a unique texture.
“Praying to the Seams”, with its crisp hi-hats and simple, chunky bass line, moves Trecka to the dance floor, though it sounds like a dance floor in a dingy Lower East Side basement. He even finds the time to remake “Houndedness” from The Bloom of Performance, giving the song, one of the highlights of that excellent record, new, vibrant life, thanks to bass and synth work from Sam Skarstand, who also engineered and recorded much of the album.
Romance Wake Naming closes with its longest track, the mesmerizing “The Dream Naming”, with its woozy, loping bass line and bed of static noise. The song sounds like the humming of an ancient machine from another planet, as if Trecka is receiving signals from space and bouncing them back to us. Like the rest of this dazzling, beautifully strange record, it sounds dense, mysterious, and captivating. There’s beauty in the grit, and Mark Trecka is there to dig it out for us.