Drøne

Drøne unites Mark Van Hoen, previously active in Locust, Scala and Seefeel, with Mike Harding, co-founder of both Touch and Ash International. Working under that name, the pair shape ambient drone pieces from field recordings, modular synthesizers and shortwave radios, generating unsettling soundscapes that prompt reflection on how audio relates to its surroundings. Releases such as the 2020 album The Stilling incorporate string arrangements that lend the work a more elegiac tone.

The pair first gathered to record during August and September 2015. Ash International later made two excerpts available as digital files accompanied by drøne T-shirts. In April 2016 Anna von Hausswolff’s Pomperipossa Records presented the project’s debut album, Reversing Into the Future, comprising the single, slowly unfolding composition “This Strange Life.” Soon afterward they completed a flexi-disc entitled Cold Tip intended for DNA, yet every copy was ruined during pressing and the item never appeared. During 2017 drøne issued the digital set Live at Touch, the Record Store Day LP A Perfect Blind—its first recording to feature string arrangements—and the self-released CD Mappa Mundi. The fourth album, The Stilling, followed in 2020. This intricately structured release featured appearances by von Hausswolff, Paul Haslinger and Philip Jeck together with parts for strings, baritone guitar, dulcimer and a 1877 Heny Willis organ captured at London’s Union Chapel.