Noctorum – Sparks Lane [COLOR VINYL MARKED DOWN HALF PRICE] – New LP
Noctorum is a collaboration between former Church guitarist Marty Willson-Piper and producer/engineer Dare Mason.
Debuting in the early 2000s, the project has resulted in several expansive baroque pop and space rock albums. The duo grew up together in the borough of Wirral, near Liverpool, and long shared a love of '60s psych-rock, '70s glam rock, space rock, and sundry other experimental pop genres. After high school, Willson-Piper moved to Australia, where he spent over 30 years as a key member of the noted alt-rock outfit the Church. Conversely, Mason remained in England and built a respected career as an engineer and producer, working at the famed Townhouse Studios in London and as a freelancer with luminaries like Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, and Ravi Shankar, as well as the Church, Placebo, the Wedding Present, and others. Over the years, the duo kept in touch and in 2002 they began working on music together. Naming themselves Noctorum after a town near where they grew up, they issued a debut album, Sparks Lane, in 2003. (A second album, Offer the Light, arrived three years later, followed by Honey Mink Forever in 2011. They returned with their fourth collaboration, The Afterlife, in 2019.)