Mark McKowski & Nick Power - Throat (Eco-mix Coloured Vinyl)

Throat consists of two artists on sabbatical from their day jobs - Nick Power from The Coral, and McKowski as one half of The Lost Brothers, film score composer (Quantum Cowboys) screen writer (The Spin) and touring musician (Jolie Holland, Howe Gelb, M. Ward). Recorded in the period of 2021 and 2024 between Omagh, Northern Ireland and Merseyside, Throat is a journey through McKowski and Power’s shared imagination. It’s a sense of outsiderness that links Throat’s disparate parts: folk-horror, VHS video nasties, poetry, the natural world, hauntology, true crime, John Laurie films, teenage acid trips, twisted road songs.

Throat is a way of giving a platform to this secret world, while almost moonlighting as a run-of-the-mill ‘album’. Soon after the title track was complete, Mark began recording and sending more music to Power, who’d write words while driving around Merseyside at night. As the tracks began taking shape, a pattern emerged, and with it, certain rules. 

All recordings go down in the first take. Mistakes stay in. Only play what’s to hand, even if it’s a tin pot. It’s within these limitations that Throat blossomed - eschewing traditional song structures for discordant instrumental breaks, passages of spoken word, the sound of footsteps on a wooden staircase.

1. Throat 

2. One 

3. The Master 

4. Death of Ghillie Man 

5. Nick Powers Dream 

6. Moon Over Tesco 

7. Dead Cars

8. New Brighton Speedway 1972 

9. The Tailor and the Mouse.

10. Return of Ghillie Man 

11. Jody Forever