Mark Gane documents the secret life of plants (and his own artistic growth) with his immersive and intriguing solo debut Garden Music — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The co-founder of iconic Canadian band Martha + The Muffins (and the mind behind international hit Echo Beach) steps into a new sonic landscape with this collection of cinematic instrumentals inspired by plant names and imagined inner worlds. Garden Music is a sprawling, deeply intuitive project that took shape over decades and now arrives as an ambient, artful meditation on memory, nature, and sound.
The Toronto composer, visual artist, and sonic tinkerer first began dreaming of Garden Music years ago, spurred by a suggestion from his partner and collaborator Martha Johnson. “She said I should do a solo project that combined my three great loves — music, painting, and gardening,” Gane explains. “Eventually, I started asking: If plants were people, what would their lives sound like?” That seed grew into a rich, textured album composed from over 50 years of collected studio, field and found recordings.
Each of the 11 instrumental pieces is named after a common plant — Bee Balm, Feverfew, Creeping Charlie, and the haunting Love Lies Bleeding, which includes the lone sung lyric: “Honey bee, you’re gone for good, and so I sing this song…” From miniature sonic sculptures to lush ambient collages, Gane’s compositions defy genre and reward close listening.
Though highly conceptual, Garden Music isn’t cold or calculated. “My approach was almost entirely intuitive,” says Gane. “I wasn’t trying to force anything. I just let each piece evolve from sounds I’d archived — live recordings, field sounds, tape hiss, voice fragments. The presence of the human voice showed up unexpectedly and stayed.” That presence takes many forms: A chopped-up interview with Delia Derbyshire, a 1951 Valentine from Gane’s mother, a ghostly late-night phone call.
Set aside for M+M projects and health challenges, Garden Music was resurrected in 2022 during the pandemic. “Finishing it felt like gardening,” Gane says. “Meditative, grounded, outside of time.” Even after mixing, the album sat quietly for two years — delayed not by doubt, but by a reluctance to re-enter the promotional machine. “When faced with the choice of building a website or working in the garden, the garden always won,” he laughs.
Gane recommends listening in the dark, lying down, allowing the music to wash over like dusk wind through lavender. Mixed with Ray Dillard and mastered by Graemme Brown at Zen Mastering, Garden Music is a testament to Gane’s multi-disciplinary ways. His history spans avant-garde performance, collaborations with sonic pioneers like Laurie Anderson and John Oswald, and design work ranging from album art to urban gardens.
Though he is best known for pop brilliance with M+M — including co-producing albums with Daniel Lanois and David Lord — Garden Music reveals a different Gane: A solitary gardener of sound, sowing strangeness and beauty in equal measure. For listeners of Brian Eno, Pauline Oliveros or Boards Of Canada — and for anyone who finds solace in the life’s quiet corners — Gane’s solo debut offers a richly immersive world to disappear into.
Explore Mark Gane’s Garden Music below, then see what’s cropping up on his website.
