As 2025 draws to a close and the last track from Dreams EP has just been sent to the distributor, it’s time to run back over the last years work.
This is a song called Rained Down — a bass-driven track, originally written on guitar and Fender Rhodes, where complex-yet-subtle layers of textural sounds ebb and flow to create a distorted, other-worldly and dreamlike environment for a voice that speaks about reaching through uncertainty to catch your dreams.
From the second verse “ Ghost-like face uncertainty, one moment you’re trapped the next you’re free, a sea of dreams the people need, and the last thing you can’t see yourself.”
Shot on 35mm film, Mark Howden’s Sun is Through draws inspiration from the remoteness and grandeur of the New Zealand landscape and from the allure of aerial photography.
Originally filmed in 2000 for a thesis project that focused on the concept of multi-site audio-visual installation art. Titled sub.ssi —sub as in under, and ssi an acronym for “site specific installation”. The film footage was compiled with music as a “soundtracks album” and was exhibited simultaneously at three different locations. The main event was at an aircraft hangar at Ardmore Aerodrome, Auckland, NZ (where the Cessna aeroplane used for the project was housed), it was also telecast on Triangle Television in Grey Lynn, and installed as screen art at Auckland University of Technology’s exhibition space. For the event, Mark chartered a bus that picked the audience up from designated bus stops in downtown Auckland and carried them to and from the aircraft hangar venue.
Fast-forward to 2025, the film footage has been updated and recontextualised with this new soundtrack from Mark’s Karaka Sound Studio for the Dreams EP.
The film footage was shot from a Cessna aeroplane over several remote locations in the North Island of New Zealand — from Lake Waikaremoana to Lake Taupo, crossing the Waikato north to Manakau Heads and up the West Coast of the North Island to Ninety Mile Beach, where we landed and drove up the sand to the Northernmost point (Tiriparepa/Scott Point).
“I wanted to create a style of film that situated itself somewhere between documentary and ethnographic film, music videos, and multimedia installation art. The project was site-specific in the sense that it played on the idea that, depending on where you showed the work determined how a viewer interpreted it. So, at an aircraft hangar, it was a creative happening-type show with the footage being projected onto the bodies of aeroplanes and the music being played over loudspeakers, on Triangle Television it functioned as a series of music videos, and at AUT it was contemplated as an audio-visual screen art installation. Now with the additional factor of time, 25 years to be specific, the recontextualisation gives the work a subsequent meaning. While photographing the landscape, I had constant awareness that the subject I was involved with would inevitably change, much would disappear, and what I was filming was a moment in time for posterity. Working with this footage now evokes this concept for the Dreams EP, literally what I was working with is from another reality and is now a dream”.
Turns and Returns was released last week, completing four-sixths of the Dreams EP 2025. Thanks Frequency State and (the now defunct) Jahrund for including it in their playlists!
The true beauty of something lies not in its bold pronouncements, but in its hidden nuances. In the almost-there, the nearly-not, the subtle friction that creates something entirely new.
We often hear music, but do we listen to its silent conversations?
Turns and Returns finds inspiration in exploring the exquisite, often overlooked drama unfolding in the fractional spaces, where a mere vibration or reflection can alter your perception. Here, the familiar is reimagined in the creative process of finding inspiration in unexpected visual and auditory landscapes where familiar daily sounds are woven into an unforeseen experience. The creation of a future-forward soundscape emerges, offering a fresh perspective beyond the surface of everyday life.
“Turns and Returns” is the forth track from Mark Howden’s Dreams EP, a 2025 release characterised by a dreamy, otherworldly aesthetic. The track is a collaboration between Howden, a music producer, and the digital artist known as Gaming.
Mark Howden 