Digital Cover: Amber Mark Goes ‘Three Dimensions Deep’

Amber Mark thinks it’s hard to describe the type of music she makes. “I always just end up saying alt-R&B because people are just like, ‘Oh I understand,’ but it’s really not,” she says. “It’s in all different types of directions and I tend to accumulate different types of listeners because of that. I’m like the fungal network. That sounds really weird but I was just watching a mushroom documentary and I’m associating my life with that now.” To clue you up, mycorrhizal networks are systems created underground by mycorrhizal fungi. These incredible underground operations connect plants and transfer a collection of nutrients and minerals between them. This is actually a wildly astute comparison to the music that Amber Mark releases. The artist crafts organic compositions rooted in specific locations that have the ability to supply a range of different sonic supplements to a wide-reaching range of listeners. “I think it just goes along with how I was raised. My mom loved to travel and we were never in one place for more than two years. Not on purpose, it just happened that way,” Mark says about the inspiration for her musicality. 

Mark’s first two projects have a core sound ingrained in different places she drew from as well as from specific life experiences. Her 2017 debut EP ‘3:33am’ was inspired by the sounds of India where her mother raised her for a significant time and was a thematic ode to her mother after she passed away. Mark’s follow-up 2018 EP, ‘Conexão’, contained a Brazilian bossa nova sound she heard her mother play on their travels and was a rumination on an impassioned experience with love. Now on the cusp of her debut LP, this new artistry has been influenced by the general yearning for clarity to be found in open-spaced nature. After a deep dive into life’s meanings through quantum physics, Mark has found an urge to exist in spaces similar to the mushrooms she has become obsessed with.

As we begin our call to discuss her upcoming body of work, Mark reveals she is about to take a quick vacation to New Hampshire to stay by a lake before venturing to the UK for her first live show after the pandemic. “I think I forgot how much I enjoy nature,” she shares. “My mom was always about being in nature then I think because of that I was trying to do the opposite. Then I lived the city life and I was like, “That’s me I’m a city girl.” Then I experienced nature last year especially during Covid and I was like, “Wow this is actually my calling. I love lakes!” So now I’m obsessed and wanna get away every way that I can.” Mark’s mother’s influence is a consistent presence within her craft. Along with the places they went, her not-so-traditional Thangka Painting techniques are uniquely reflected in Mark’s production that she does herself for many of her tracks. “She took something that was very traditional and kind of made it her own in a way,” she says. “I guess I kind of do that, it’s like a hybrid of sounds that I like to do.” The combination of the influence of nature’s wonder and her mother’s painting sonically combusted into Mark’s highly-anticipated debut album, ‘Three Dimensions Deep’, set for release on 28th January 2022 via EMI/PMR Records.

To get to the album’s zen-like conclusion of seeing her place in open space, Mark had to go through a catharsis of sorts before and through the pandemic. “I spent a lot of time questioning what we were doing on a muddy rock in the middle of the universe and I think that was the biggest inspiration behind the album,” she explains. “Lyrically and conceptually it goes down this meta quantum physics realm. It starts with everyday insecurities that we have as human beings like, “Am I good enough? Am I going to succeed?” It has physical insecurities, relationship lows, and all those things but essentially takes a turn and starts to question much bigger things than even our world.” 

Mark felt overwhelmed by her day-to-day anxieties in the time between ‘Conexão’ and this new project and moved from denying those internal issues and partying them away, to looking deeply for answers when she realized drowning out and pushing down fear wasn’t healing. Most of the album was crafted pre-lockdown when she began to start to find her way out of the contemplation, but when she was forced into a space with her own thoughts solely everything expanded even more thoroughly and clearly. “During the whole quarantine situation I think everyone’s eyes opened up trying to scramble and figure out how they could help,” she says. “Immediately I was like we have to go to those who are in power and can change things. Then I learned more about that and was like fuck all these people, left and right are all corrupt. I felt like there was no answer there. So I tried to look even further into why there is suffering at the most fundamental level. I started to question all of that but it started to form this whole concept for the album. Then I started putting these pieces together and started writing about all these theories that I watched on YouTube from quantum physicists. People always put science and spirituality on completely opposite ends of the spectrum but when I started to look into all of that it felt like the same thing, just expressed differently. It almost made me more spiritual and I felt more connected to the earth, more present, and I think it kind of opened my mind. I wanted to utilize that in the album. I also smoked a lot of weed over quarantine so that’s probably another part.”

The resulting album from this mental and semi-drug-induced journey displays Mark in a separatist sonic utopia. There is no one landmark of sound or genre to dig in and identify on the project but still, it feels entirely interconnected. It’s all about the organic arc and natural progression. “It really dives into all different types of sounds,” she proclaims. “Some of it dives into old school ‘3:33am’ types of sounds, like with “Worth It” you get a little taste of that. But then I have newer-sounding stuff that I haven’t really tapped into. I feel like “Competition” is this new sound that I haven’t really gone for. There’s a super 80s vibe like if Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, and Prince made a song together.” Though some lifelong listening influences played a role, as well as her cerebral and spiritual journey, the interconnecting lineage of the album is through Mark’s emotional maneuvering. “I tapped into my emotions and whatever I was feeling,” she expresses about the impetus for creation. “But in doing so there was this sort of gaining of confidence which resulted in “Foreign Things,” “FOMO,” and all of those kinds of upbeat songs. Then after running away from my problems and feelings there was this aha moment. “Competition,” “Worth It,” and “Bliss” are from that moment. There’s a general storyline but only because I tried to tap into all these emotions I had and it’s not like you need to know this whole storyline to appreciate the album. It’s more so that if you do appreciate the album and it touches you emotionally, you can dive into this little universe I created.”

That universe isn’t just reflected in the music but the resulting world-building visuals. Both visuals for Mark’s singles “Worth It” and “Competition” create new grain-filled optical spaces inspired by some of Mark’s favorite moments from her favorite series. “Both were inspired by ‘Avatar the last Airbender’, my favorite show of all time,” she says. “I love that whole universe and dream of being a water bender. One day in some alternate universe hopefully that exists. There’s a huge inspiration there when you look at all those formations, especially in “Competition.” That’s all coming from specific scenes. The green and blue fits are taken from the earth bender’s kingdom and tribe.” The other touches on the visuals are from the costumes and sets of Star Wars Episodes 1 through 3 even though Mark says she knows it is “the worst Star Wars trilogy.” She reinterprets a few fits from Natalie Portman’s character Queen Amidala with her glimmering jewelry multi-shaped hairdos. Mark co-directed both visuals and used the space not to just create worlds but to again connect more with her mother’s spirit. “The glowing eyes when they start to beam up in “Worth It” as well as the connection to spiritualities like Tibetan Buddhism, which is what my mom practiced, is a huge homage to Avatar. I loved that they took a lot from there. So I tried to incorporate that. I always try to put little accents of my mom, who’s always in my head, in the art I make.” Even when Mark escapes, her mother exists in every new dimension acting like her constant.

Though the album does thrive on alternately crafted dimensions used to process unexplainable conundrums, some of the standout tracks, especially at the top of the album, focus on real-life relationships with unsuccessful love. “I tend to get quite codependent, so I wanted to talk about the ends of my relationships and how it affected me,” Mark says. “So it doesn’t start with me in love, it kind of starts at the end at a very low point. But at least sonically it doesn’t sound like that.” The bright lasting synths and textures that Mark is referring to transition from supporting tragic realizations to uplifting potent self mantras. “I utilize writing those songs by putting it out there and then listening to it as a form of helping me so I can move on and grow. You know, like typical Instagram quotes.” This slight self-deprecation doesn’t actually do service to Mark’s lyricism in these moments. When she sings lines like, “I’ve got to lighten up, stop being so tough” and “Girl, you’re so reckless with your heart,” these astute reminders have value well beyond social media surface level basicness. They have the ability to connect to many listeners in their specificity and grow more roots from the core. The opening songs and sentiments set up a perfect spike of the sonic volleyball when Mark finally reaches her enlightenment at the end. 

The intensified mental and emotional contemplation and struggles have landed Mark where she has wanted to be musically. That said, she did also reach a different type of clarity over the isolation of the pandemic. Mark, mostly for fun, crafted a series, ‘Covered-19’ containing five self-recorded and produced covers each with their own accompanying video. It all started when she wanted to cover Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” for a live r&b radio show pre-pandemic but couldn’t because she was told it wouldn’t fit the aesthetic. “I wanted to be like, “Guys I know I can make this cool in terms of r&b and it would be sick to take a song nobody would expect me to do and make it into a completely different sound,” she says. Though she didn’t get to live out her Nirvana cover dreams then, she kept the idea in her back pocket and executed it when she had the downtime over the past year. It proved to be a worthwhile formula. The standout track from the following series, though, provided Mark with a new idea she could carry with her. “I was taking songs I could make my own and Sisqo’s “Thong Song” was one of them,” she says. “I’ve always been obsessed with that since I was a kid. I’m sure people don’t appreciate it as a good song but me and my friends were like, “This is genius!” One day I was just like I’m gonna cover it and see what happens. I was just gonna put it out as a joke but then I sent it to the label and they were like, “We have to put this out.” It wasn’t anything super planned. There’s so much meaning and dedication put into my projects and I tend to overthink things sometimes. But all the quarantine covers and demos I made really exposed the side to me realizing, “Wow I can just have fun with this and don’t have to put so much meaning behind it.” Not everything has to mean something for me to put it out and enjoy it.” It’s intriguing to think about what this may lead to in future projects but that said what Mark has now off of the overthinking will transport you to her unique stratosphere.

The correlation between what Mark took from the process of crafting this album versus what she hopes others will from hearing it is fascinating. Over the nearly three-year creation process, though she has cascaded through a musical and mental passage, Mark doesn’t immediately think she’s grown much as a person. “I haven’t really changed as a person, I’m still very messy,” she explains. “It’s so clear to me from a music perspective, but as a person? I guess I question things more. Honestly, I’d say what’s changed is my trust and it’s kind of sad. I get really skeptical especially when it comes to politics and stuff like that, there’s always a catch there. But sometimes I’m happy that I’ve thought about those things.” Though she trusts herself almost tenfold she can’t say the same for others or society. She tells me she hears her growth in her solo production when she listens back to old demos and new but doesn’t think she or the world has progressed in the amount that they should have. 

The counterpoint to that is Mark’s own words about what she hopes others will gain from her album. She says, “Everyone’s gonna listen to the album not understanding completely where I went. People are gonna take it in different directions emotionally and connect with it in completely different ways. I don’t really care how they connect with it, I just care that they connect with it and it brings out emotions that they can relate to. That’s already enough for me.” That in itself feels like proof of progress even though it is still in a musical context. Yet when Mark thinks about it a bit more it is impossible to deny her elevation through her wishes. “If there was one thing (people could take away) though that would be ideal is the feeling I get when I look at the stars at night,” she declares. “Not in New York City cuz you can’t really see shit here, but when you go upstate or somewhere where there’s not really much pollution and you look up into the night sky and it’s like, “Holy fuckin shit we’re so small.” All these problems that we keep fighting against each other are literally so meaningless if we were to go out into the universe and look back on planet earth.” Mark wants for people to take from her new album the perspective she has undeniably gained. Though she is hesitant to admit her progress it is proven in how she thinks about others. Interestingly enough she is reminded of her enlightened perspective most when she is in nature and looking up, potentially connecting subconsciously with her mother. 

As Amber Mark prepares for her first in-person show in London in a few days to present some of these ideas live she says she feels “excited and nervous.” She then reflects on a virtual show where she had to sing over a track to a wall beyond her computer screen while she had pictures of her band taped to the wall behind her. She says about the experience, “I was like, never again.” Even Mark knows that while some enlightenment happened during separation, it can’t be fully processed until it’s shared. Perhaps she will feel differently about her progression once she’s three dimensions deep.