Mark Gane has had a storied career in the Canadian music business. He’s the co-founder of iconic late 1970s/1980s band Martha and the Muffins, and the writer of their international hit single “Echo Beach”.
He was recently inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame for Echo Beach, but Mark is much more than a pop-punk band guitarist or songwriter, however. Gane is a visual artist (painter, photographer, graphic design), performance artist, and a composer who likes to explore soundscapes far beyond the usual bounds of radio-friendly music.
Mark is also an avid gardener.
Most of his passions emerge on the experimental instrumental album, with compositions that were inspired by plant names, and inner worlds of fantasy. It’s a personal project that has been literally decades in the making.
Garden Music: The Album
The album was released May 1, 2025 independently, and is available on Bandcamp.
The music is atmospheric and very contemporary in its sound; you could call it ambient music, for lack of a better designation. The compositions are layered with harmonies and sounds, including electronics, sampled vocalisations and bits of recorded spoken words and phrases used almost as melodic elements. Love Lies Bleeding includes the lone sung lyric, “Honey Bee you’re gone for good, and so I sing this song…”. Many tracks build a contrapuntal structure within those layers.
He explores different moods through the 11 tracks. Deadly Nightshade, for example, uses layers of sounds like gongs or chimes that ebb and flow like the wind, intercut with a grizzled voice talking in slo mo. It effectively creates a kind of haunted mood.
Mark’s passion for sonic exploration is evident throughout the tracks. Naked Broom Rape, named after Orobanche uniflora, also known as the one-flowered cancer root, or ghost pipe, begins with bird songs and whistles, and then gets tangled up into what could be described as electronic scribbling. Even Johnny Jump Up, perhaps the most conventional sounding of the 11 tracks, takes a swingy pop kind of rhythm down a meandering garden path of experimental sounds and layers.
Sweet Rocket (as a plant, aka Hesperis matronalis, or Dame’s Rocket), plays with the meaning of the words with electronic noise that resembles a space rocket’s sounds in flight, with a recurring spoken track of various voices saying Oh my God! over and over. It’s a witty soundscape.
Mark Gane: The Interview
Mark’s fascination with sound exploration began during his art school days. “Of course, back then it was OCA and not OCAD,” he says. “I was a general studies student, which meant I could take anything.”
At the then-Ontario College of Art, he took courses as diverse as life drawing, experimental music, and abstract painting.
“It was one of those rare moments in life,” he says of the opportunity. He notes that the kind of environment where students are simply encouraged to study whatever subjects they want is rare. It offered the rare luxury of being able to fail without anyone laughing, without the high stakes typically inherent to creative studies.
“I really valued those years. I think when the art college became a university I think something got lost there.” It wasn’t an academic setting, he points out, for better or worse. “I had some phenomenal teachers.”
One of those teachers was Estonian-Canadian composer, pianist, organist, teacher and writer Udo Kasemets. Kasemets taught at the Hamilton Conservatory of Music after emigrating to Canada in 1951, and was a music critic for the Toronto Star from 1959 to 1962. He was the founder-director of the Toronto Bach Society in the late 1950s, and a strong proponent of new music.
It was when Gane’s passion for experimental music began to take flower.
“He was on a real John Cage cycle,” he said of Kasemets. He taught Gane about chance compositions, and how to structure a piece around them.
During Gane’s time there, OCA was visited by ensembles like CCMC, a free improvisation group founded in 1974 with members that included Nobuo Kubota, Graham Coughtry, and Michael Snow. (Fun fact: the trio would also go on to found The Music Gallery.)
“They would play in the Annex,” he recalls.
Even before OCA, at Etobicoke Collegiate, a friend introduced Mark to the likes of Penderecki, Stockhausen, and Steve Reich.
“I think the first time he came over to my house, he brought the third King Crimson album, and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew,” he says.
While Martha and the Muffins took the majority of his attention for several years, Gane has performed with other sonic pioneers such as Laurie Anderson and John Oswald, and has exhibited and participated in group exhibitions and performances at OCA, The Music Gallery, The Art Gallery of Ontario and alternative galleries in Toronto.
He conceived, produced and performed with collaborator Charlie Roby in the performance installation coloured night: 12 hours 12 tones at Toronto’s 2010 Nuit Blanche Festival. Mark has also remained active as a writer, editor, producer and director of music videos.
“In a way this record is kind of a full circle.”
That’s not only his own impression. After releasing the album, a friend from back in the days at the experimental lab at OCA told him, “You were doing things like this in the sound lab.”
In effect, it’s a journey that began the other way around.
“In a way, I’ve noticed in some reviews, it’s marking the way from Echo Beach to here — but it’s really the other way around.” Sonic experiments, he notes, came long before Martha and the Muffins.
In particular, some of the techniques he uses on the album were first developed decades ago, including the layered sounds, and the process of hiding sounds within other sounds, so that when one diminishes and disappears in the mix, it reveals another underneath it.
A Half Century Of Experiments
Much of the album consists of about 50 years worth of collected studio, field, and found recordings.
“It was percolating for a long time,” Gane says of the album.
It was partner and creative collaborator Martha Johnson (yes, the Martha of the Muffins), who suggested working on his own album many years ago.
“My Martha and the Muffins co-founding member and creative partner said, you really should combine all the things you like.”
He’d been collecting sounds and tracks for years when health issues put the project on a shelf temporarily. The pandemic added impetus.
“In the middle of COVID, I thought […] I better finish this or I’ll be dead before this happens,” he laughs. “I think in 2022 I just got to it. Oddly enough and without any explanation I can give, I let it sit for another two years.”
In essence, it’s the album’s inspiration that kept him from working in the studio.
“The garden always won,” he says. “I’m pretty obsessed.”
The Music
How does he describe his own music?
“I think, Ray Dillard, who co-wrote one of the pieces, and helped me mix it […] he described it as modern classical music, which I thought was kind of interesting. I would add to that that it is kind of filmic.”
While he realizes it’s asking a lot in today’s world, he has a request for anyone listening to the album.
“When I was younger, you listened to albums at one go,” he says. “I’m asking for people, if they can, to listen to it at one go under focused listening conditions.”
As a society, we’re bombarded with images and sounds on an almost constant basis. “My idea is to try and take 40 minutes and find a quiet place to listen to it,” he adds.
Will old fans like his new music?
“I’m quite comfortable with the fact that some people will hate it,” he says. “It’s not a pop album.”
He’s not worried about relevance in the pop music stratosphere these days.
“I think with music, you always find an audience,” he says.
He paid a lot of attention to the details, including the order of the tracks on the album. “I spent a long time sequencing this album. There’s kind of an arc to it, but on the other hand, the pieces are quite disparate,” he notes.
For the sake of listeners, he’s left a few extra seconds of silence between the tracks to as not to plunge directly from one into the next. “You can’t plunge one into the other,” he says.
“You’re going on a journey.”
- Find Mark Gane’s Garden Music to buy, stream or download [HERE].
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