SPARKY - Cairns Artist

Musician, DJ and performance artist, Mark Edwards (aka Sparky), demonstrates his talent as a producer of electronic music with the release of his latest project, UBERSCHWARTZ TWO, a combined music video with soundtrack.

Local producer Mark Edwards has both a music and performance background and has been experimenting with samplers and effects units since 1996. He began by experimenting with the sound recordings of his Fremantle band Moustache 750, adding samples and effects using an 8-track recorder and a digital delay unit. From this Marks interest in electronic music production began to develop and has grown from a past time into a serious passion.

Since moving to Cairns in 1999, Mark became an active member of the local arts community collaborating with local artists on various projects. One such collaboration was with co-producer Hanz Jurss on the track 'Grass Hopper Dub', released under the name The Truck Brothers on the Hot Rubber Glove album 'Fight The Drug War'.

Mark has been associated with numerous community projects over the years such as Diverse Dance Cairns, Mixedlollies.com and Festival Cairns, and has performed as a DJ and solo artist under the moniker Sparky at numerous events and exhibitions. His latest project, Uberschwartz, is a combined music video with an accompanying soundtrack. Mark is the producer of both the music video and soundtrack that features fellow artists Catrin Balck (aka Ultima 80, Sweden), Manifest Castalette and Diverse Dance Cairns.

Uberschwartz, meaning ‘Over Black’, is indicative of the piece of music that Mark describes as a “goth-breaks-lounge track”. It is part one of a music video trilogy that was selected for The Portable Film Festival in 2005 and is also on the JJJ Unearthed website.

As a producer, Mark uses a combination of voice and sound recordings, samples from vinyl and an assortment of music production software for making sound installations and groove based music for dance floors. Mark describes the motivation behind his work, "I am inspired by environment, sounds and textures that create emotion. Human made sounds that I can twist and distort into music".

"The video for 'UBERSCHWARTZ ONE' was produced over the summer of 2004/5, filmed in Cairns. The story is about a distant all female planet which has just received the first TV broadcast from Earth, having seen what is happening they zap down to save us from what they see as a threat to peace in our world, only problem is they are 69 years too late and on the wrong side of the planet!"

After the successful completion of their previous mission the UBERGIRLS have been assigned the task of protecting the biodiversity of planet EARTH from imminent biological depletion. With the assistance of the international spy of mystery MR EVIL MIXER a secret vessel will transport DNA samples and biological material across the galaxy back to planet UBERSCHWARTZ.