Trying to put the last 15 years of music into context, you’d be hard pressed to get anyone to agree on a single thing. If anything, this period has been a collective convergence of all things cool-sounding: naïve experimentalism, academic composition, art-rock synthesis, electronic nihilism/flagellation, and, well, everything else. Mark McGuire could muddy anyones interpretation of the contemporary canon with his buddies in the triadic mega-unit, Emeralds, his collaborative outings in Sun Watcher and Skyramps (with Daniel “Oneohtrix Point Never” Lopatin), and his prolific, yet well-executed, solo work. ”Have you heard his shredability, incomprehensible astral traveling and meditative neutron stasis on any of those solo jams, the dude must be ancient!?” Truth is, Mark Mcguire is a youngin’, not a refugee of the ’70s. Nor is he mining unfamiliar territory; he produces something old and familiar, yet it sounds so fresh and necessary for today.

    Originally released as limited edition cassettes and masterfully cleaned up for this definitive release by James Plotkin, Tidings/Amethyst Wavesfinds McGuire packing 60+ minutes with trance-inducing, melodic guitar intricacies, an occasional wall-of-squall reminiscent of Mizutani riding a thunder horse, and filaments of a drifting stratosphere where organic synthed-out solos are nestled in tight. With this release, Mark McGuire has hatched a true American Euro-vision utilizing major shifts in the ‘music as language’ paradigm. No joke, this is where Wyld Stallyns is heading in the year 2398 A.G. and Tidings/Amethyst Waves is as essential as anything in the Emeralds catalog.