MARK JENKINS – HORATIOS, BRIGHTON 15.9.24
Today was a great day to be alive! The sun was beaming down on to my face and it was like the Tour de France where I was down on Brighton seafront today. There were literally thousands of cyclists racing down from London to the finish line in Madeira Drive, many of whom were raising funds for their chosen charity. In the meantime, it’s also almost ‘Tour de France’ at Horatios on the Palace Pier as Mark Jenkins is working his way through a solo set of his tribute to Kraftwerk (and others) by performing a 16-tune 99-minute free admission set of their classic tunes as well as his own compositions.
If the name Mark Jenkins sounds vaguely familiar, it might be on account of him having worked on music magazines like Melody Maker in the 1980s, where he managed to meet some of the most interesting musicians for interviews. He also got to see all the latest high-tech instruments as they appeared, which certainly encouraged Mark to create his own material. He has been fortunate to have played a lot of festivals and other events all over the world with his own music, which sounds a bit like Jean-Michel Jarre or Vangelis, but interestingly he has also played in a mediaeval rock band and other line-ups.
Let’s face it, Mark has music running through his veins, and of late when some big anniversaries have come up regarding music that is dear to his heart, he hit on the idea of sharing that joy and his inspirations. Thus Mark decided to do some live performances to match, so last year he played his recreations of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ and Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’ which were both 50 years old.
Another of Mark’s projects revolves around the fact that Kraftwerk’s legendary fourth album, ‘Autobahn’ is 50 years old this year. It vinyl dropped on Friday 1 November 1974 and was literally like nothing else I had ever heard before. At the time, I purchased the album from a long-lost record shop in Gardner Street, in Brighton, the site of which is opposite Komedia. From that moment onwards, I was hooked on everything Kraftwerk, and I guess Mark is very much in the same boat, and that’s why our paths have crossed today.
Mark informed us that he is already looking forward to next year (late March in fact) and will be playing his take on Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, plus other tracks from 1975 including Yes, ELP, Gong, Hawkwind and others, so it’s a whole evening of psychedelic rock!
Mark explains “All those bands were great innovators in their time, but now the latest technology makes it possible to compose, record and perform with just a laptop and a couple of instruments, which is how I do all my live shows – except I put a lot of effort into the accompanying visuals too, and often like to have some smoke and lasers… I carry different equipment for each show, but for Kraftwerk shows I use a little keyboard synthesizer called the MicroKorg. It has great sounds but more importantly it has a built-in vocoder for making computerised speech sounds, which Kraftwerk does a lot. Other than that, the laptop does a lot of the work, a MacBook Air running software called Apple Logic which helps create all the sounds and sections of each composition. That’s my portable system, my studio system for composing is much too large to be moved…”.
Mark added “I’ve released a double CD with 22 tracks, about two thirds of which are Kraftwerk tunes covered pretty much straight – some have the vocals switched from male to female, or have some additional verses or other changes. The rest of the tracks are my own compositions, or cover versions of different artists in the style of Kraftwerk – of Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, and Cameo for example. Also on the CD is a medley of more experimental pieces from the first three Kraftwerk albums which the band never performs”.
And so I’m at Horatios in order to see what Mark has to offer! There’s a video screen to the rear of the stage and this will be showing accompanying films to the music, which adds to the enjoyment. Mark begins at 4:05pm with at least a 10-minute version of the classic ‘Autobahn’ which certainly sets the tone. Let’s not forget that Horatios is actually a bar, and for the duration of this number, those gathered to watch the crisp clear electronic music set, were being hampered by the merry revellers who were having a jolly time on the adjoining patio in the sun. Thankfully, the cheerful posse downed their liquid refreshments and toddled on off elsewhere. We all could now chill out to the tunes as we sat and watched.
Selection two was titled ‘She’s A Model’ and featured the recorded vocals of Hayley Williams of Heaven 17 fame. This tune is a reworking of Kraftwerk’s No.1 hit single ‘The Model’ which originally came out in 1978 but only hit the top slot when it was flipped from being the B-side of ‘Computer Love’ in 1981. Controversially, this song is far from my favourite Kraftwerk tunes, whereas Mark’s following choice, is actually not only my favourite track by Kraftwerk, but is actually my favourite song by anyone ever! No stress then Mark! However, Mark was thinking outside the box, like he had with the previous tune, in getting a female vocalist on the track instead of him singing it. This time for ‘Neon Lights’ he had called upon the vocal services of both Emilie Parry-Williams and Mark O’Malley which again were pre-recorded, and these were delivered as if they were part of a West End musician, hence it’s titled ‘West End Version’. Imagine someone like Sarah Brightman singing atop of a hypnotic synth masterpiece, as you’re about there. It was an interesting experiment!
Now talking of experiments, Kraftwerk fans will be aware that some of the German quartet’s tunes are sung in other languages including obviously English, plus French, Spanish, Italian and even Japanese. So to that end, Mark has recreated the band’s hip-hop anthem (‘Numbers’) and delivers it in Welsh! Thus it’s titled ‘Numbers (Fersiwn Cymraeg)’ (Welsh Version). As per the original, this segues into ‘Computer World’ which is virtually true to the original.
Mark next performed the first of three self-penned tunes during the performance and I was interested to see how he would fare with his own material. Well blow me down, I wasn’t expecting this! Prior to its commencement, Mark recounted the story of a conversation that he had with Wolfgang Flür who is best known for playing percussion in Kraftwerk from 1973 to 1987. Mark had asked Wolfgang if there was any form of transport that they hadn’t written about. (They had covered cars with ‘Autobahn’, trains with ‘Trans-Europe Express’, reusable laboratories used on certain spaceflights ‘Spacelab’, and bicycles on ‘Tour de France’). Flür’s reply was to inform Mark about Ekranoplan which is the only ground effect vehicle (GEV) to ever be operationally deployed as a warship. Thus Mark wrote a tune called ‘Ekranoplan’ and it’s his next selection with accompanying absorbing video, which shows the said form of transport in action – watch it HERE. It looks like a weird plane, find out more HERE. The video reminded me of Thomas Dolby’s ‘One Of Our Submarines’ video as it’s along similar lines. The tune, however, is honestly equal to other similar sounding hidden electronic classics, namely ‘People At An Exhibition’ by Jonteknik and ‘Passenger’ by Metroland. I’m going to peek early and actually state for the record that, for me, ‘Ekranoplan’ was the choice track of the whole set, especially the vocoder parts!
Going off-piste, Mark next covered Kate Bush’s ‘“Wow”’ which is found on her 1978 ‘Lionheart’ album. I spied a couple of the audience really getting into this track and recording it on their phones, but sadly for me it was the weakest of the set, despite the vocoder parts.
The next handful of tunes were all Kraftwerk compositions, the first of which being the short spoken word ‘The Voice Of Energy’ which segues into Mark’s reinterpretation of ‘Radioactivity’ which is given the added title of ‘(The Oppenheimer Interpretation)’. The video included an interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) and it was fascinating and informative to watch how radioactivity was discovered and how it works. The subject then moved to happier thoughts with the arrival of ‘Je Clique L’amour’ which is actually Mark’s French version of ‘Computer Love’, which he highlights in the fact that Kraftwerk never actually recorded a French version of it, which was surprising as that is for many the land of love! Mark stated that his version included snippets of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s ‘Je t’aime… Moi Non Plus’, but I didn’t really hear that.
Next up was the foot-tapping ‘Kometenmelodie 2’ (‘Comet Melody 2’), with the original appearing on Kraftwerk’s 1974 ‘Autobahn’ album. This was followed by the sole cut from Kraftwerk’s 1986 ‘Electric Café’ album in the form of Mark’s recreation of ‘Sex Objekt’ with recorded female vocals supplied by Athena Fairchild. After this Mark gave us a couple of his own compositions in the form of the chugging electronic synth beat and melodic keys atop of ‘Hindenburg’ complete with accompanying airship video, and then on to ‘You Are My Toy’ which Mark confesses that when he was in his studio, he was trying to recreate ‘Pocket Calculator’, but it somehow morphed into his own new composition. We even had his own not so Texas Instruments pocket calculator to play with as he passed it around to a trio of the audience for them to have a play with, as Kraftwerk had done back during their 1981 tour. I was lucky enough to have had a go on Florian Schneider’s (RIP) one, during one of the gigs I went to. Interestingly, the video of this was showing robots and yet I don’t believe Mark has as yet had a go at recreating the classic Kraftwerk tune of the same name yet. Then I got to thinking what other Kraftwerk classics could he have a go at in the future and came to the conclusion that ‘Expo 2000’, ‘Spacelab’, ‘Tour De France’ and even a recreation of Kraftwerk’s live version of ‘It’s More Fun To Compute’ (which was far superior to the recorded version), would be an interesting challenge.
Mark signed off with ‘Europe Endless’ and the short ‘Endless Endless’ which are both found on Kraftwerk’s 1977 ‘Trans-Europe Express’ album and at 5:44pm that was our lot. It had been an interesting afternoon and one which I was glad that I made the effort to go and see.
Mark Jenkins:
Mark Jenkins – vocals and electronics (as listed above)
Mark Jenkins setlist:
‘Autobahn’ (original on Kraftwerk’s 1974 ‘Autobahn’ album)
‘She’s A Model’ (feat Hayley Williams on recorded vocals) (‘The Model’ original on Kraftwerk’s 1978 ‘The Man Machine’ album)
‘Neon’ Lights (West End Version)’ (original on Kraftwerk’s 1978 ‘The Man Machine’ album)
‘Numbers (Fersiwn Cymraeg)’ (Welsh Version) / ‘Computer World’ (both originals on Kraftwerk’s 1981 ‘Computer World’ album)
‘Ekranoplan’ (from Mark Jenkins 2021 ‘Influences’ album)
‘“Wow”’ (original on Kate Bush’s 1978 ‘Lionheart’ album)
‘The Voice Of Energy’ / ‘Radioactivity (The Oppenheimer Interpretation)’ (both originals on Kraftwerk’s 1975 ‘Radio-Activity’ album)
‘Je Clique L’amour’ (‘Computer Love’ French version) (original on Kraftwerk’s 1981 ‘Computer World’ album)
‘Kometenmelodie 2’ (‘Comet Melody 2’) (original on Kraftwerk’s 1974 ‘Autobahn’ album)
‘Sex Objekt’ (feat Athena Fairchild on recorded vocals) (original on Kraftwerk’s 1986 ‘Electric Café’ album)
‘Hindenburg’ (from Mark Jenkins 2024 ‘A Tribute To Kraftwerk – 50 Years Of Autobahn And Far Beyond…’ album)
‘You Are My Toy’ (from Mark Jenkins 2024 ‘A Tribute To Kraftwerk – 50 Years Of Autobahn And Far Beyond…’ album)
‘Europe Endless’ (from Kraftwerk’s 1977 ‘Trans-Europe Express’ album)
‘Endless Endless’ (from Kraftwerk’s 1977 ‘Trans-Europe Express’ album)
All of the above tunes can be found on Mark Jenkins 2024 ‘A Tribute To Kraftwerk – 50 Years Of Autobahn And Far Beyond…’ album which is available for purchase HERE.
Video clip extracts from some of Mark’s music can be found on YouTube HERE.
