Working in the studio with a world of sounds spread around you, Hammond organs, a great room for tones, a beautiful console: these are things that can make an audio impresario happy. While this dragon year begins to unfold, Money Mark is immersing himself in studio heaven making a new album, adding to the 30-some sonic manipulations he laid down over a 30-day period at the end of 1999. Judging from the streaming MP3 tracks of the first rough mixes that are up on www.moneymark.com (three unfinished pieces from that whirlwind session), he has honed the rich soul groove of his keyboard sounds to a modern vibe, while still leaving hints of funk and psychedelic influences. Did his last release, Push the Button, pass on the baton and set a precedent for him to make more organic keyboard songs? Will the next album be an upgrade, merging all the lessons learned in previous releases? Mark says he doesn’t know. “Recording music can really only be a facsimile of what sounds are really there. The trick about it for me is capturing the feeling of something. That’s most important.” One thing is for sure. He wants to be true to whatever presents itself every day in life. It’s all about just doing. His life revolves around fixating auditory imprints that come into his sphere and enriching them with warm, realistic qualities; drawing upon varieties of moments he has lived. Money Mark elaborates: “My life is just about recording and being around the equipment and being playful with it.... I’m influenced by all sounds, like nature, and even all of my senses have something to do with it. And then all the recordings I’ve ever heard, records or whatever. Nature and sounds of the city and people’s voices, babies crying.” His passion for the organic feel of his instruments and getting to know their inner workings is famous. He says, “It’s almost like seeing; when you sit in a room you see things, you sit there long enough, you start seeing more details–it’s just how our brains work. And if you sit there long enough, you will eventually know everything about a certain room. And that’s how I feel about an instrument, in that I see other musicians, ones that I admire, they stay on their instruments longer and longer and longer and they learn more about it and they really get into it. And then I wonder how can a person play that instrument so well. For them I guess it’s natural–they spend so much time doing it.” In the fast-paced world of technology today, Money Mark feels the need to resist what he calls “speed delusion” where everything becomes obsolete so fast, because “we don’t give them the chance to spread out and investigate.” It’s a balancing act where he sees both the pros and cons of using machines and technology. On one hand, people spend so much time working on machines that “they expect to have those same kind of relationships with human beings.” Even more ponderous is his thought that we give up parts of ourselves where “we don’t feel like we have to have memories because we’ll let the machine capture them for us. It’s revolutionized the way we think.” On the other hand, he is hopeful about the increasing possibilities new developments bring: “You know when people are communicating on the internet...they may be making more friends than they’ve ever made in their whole life. And now they’re not prejudging them by any external thing, they’re connecting with someone’s thoughts and feelings because they have to communicate without facial expressions and clothes and labels and logos.” Coming from a similar relationship to music as sound experimenters like Mike Patton, or perhaps even John Cage, Mark reconciles the incongruity between technophobia and technophilia by treating each sound like an entity with unique potential. After he captures something on tape, he becomes friends with it. He says, “The palette of sounds in the world are all equal. The sound of a Stradivarius is as equal in my mind as a coin falling on the floor, or a bird.” In addition, he goes on to make the distinction between performing live music and studio processing: “Recording music can really only be a facsimile of what sounds are really there. The trick about it for me is capturing the feeling of something. That’s most important.” As an example, Mark relates that the keyboard stylings on the Beastie Boys’ album, Check Your Head happened because the guys felt good, simply had fun while the tape was running, which enabled them to “catch a moment.” He explains that their relaxed attitude was responsible: “They were at a time when they were just experimenting and I think, my honest opinion about it, they weren’t really caring about selling records and packaging the songs. I think they were really enjoying the time they were spending with each other. The tape happened to be rolling, we picked up our instruments and started recording a bunch of stuff. It was good.” “It’s like when you eat organic food. It’s not about even the food; it’s about the information that’s there. Everything is down to phyto-whatever. Phyto-music.” Moments such as those sometimes make him wish that he could always have the tape running, despite some apprehension regarding too much tech stuff. So while he was not immediately all for the idea when Mixman approached him about a sampler to put up as a downloadable track on their site (that anyone could remix), he eventually agreed. Mark believes “if anything is going to get someone interested in something else, then it becomes part of this filling in this line, the lineage of things...it’s okay.” And he is never one to put down the ideas of people who capture his affinity. “What I’m all for is being in the community, whatever that is. And considering all the b/s that’s right now on the web, this doesn’t fall into that category I don’t think.” His tendency is to cultivate ideas like a gardener: “I start with nothing, then something sparks...I could just hear someone say a phrase. And from that I get an idea and then somehow it’s conveyed through, and then I attach it to some kind of sound...I begin doing other things to it and relating other sounds to it and build this thing. And then I usually just finish it in one sitting. And then it’s done. And then I start over.” Ultimately, though, he feels gratitude that he can be in the situation to record what he wants. His response is to be at it all the time, yet not to force it–he likes to wait and let things happen on their own: “I would probably be the one at the party just sitting in one place–just let the party come to me. Eventually, everyone will be in that room, you’ll be the center of the party.” The inspiration comes in abundance because he is not spending his energy chasing it, and when he receives it, all the nourishment is there. Money Mark says, “It’s like when you eat organic food. It’s not about even the food; it’s about the information that’s there. Everything is down to phyto-whatever. Phyto-music.” Think of it as the roots of a sprouting song absorbing nutrients for musical growth.