Audio

The easiest way to listen to our music is on Spotify or YouTube. All four of our albums are available on these two platforms.

However, for those of you who are new to our music, here are three tracks taken off each of our albums.

Here are some rare songs that you will only find on this website.

The Afterdeath EP was released in 2019 to showcase two songs that didn't make it onto the Afterlife album - "The Mermaid" and "Dancing With Death". These songs were supplemented by two cover versions - "I Can't Escape Myself" by The Sound and "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" by Buffalo Springfield.

There was one song that never made it onto Honey Mink Forever. It was called "The Fugitive". The lyrics were inspired by an episode of The Sopranos, of which I was a big fan. Marty didn't like the lyrics I had written and so I suggested that he take the song and come up with his version, which he did and he named it "Turn The Dial and Scream".

The Fugitive

Turn The Dial and Scream

Dare Mason is interviewed by David White at BBC Radio Cornwall in 2006.

Video

These videos were shot and edited by Olivia Willson-Piper

Photos

Album Cover Ideas

Here are some album cover ideas that never made it.

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Press

Stan Koepenick (Ear Candy) reviews Sparks Lane

Even though the name Noctorum is new, the sound will immediately pop a light bulb in your head-who is this? It is actually Marty Willson-Piper, lead guitarist of The Church. But this CD is not a solo release-it is a project with Dare Mason, a musician/producer who has collaborated with the band in the past.

Marty wrote all the lyrics, and Dare only sings lead on one track, but OK-whatever works. The CD starts off with the lilting "Hey There"-Marty is still as melancholy about life as ever-"I don't have a television or a telephone/because I need to spend my life alone."

"My Museum" is a haunting track, filled with the lush instrumentation that Church fans are used to hearing-"you are a luxury, a poison a drug/and I don't know how to unplug"- Marty sings as multi-tracked guitars chime away in the background.

Noctorum's best song comes midway through the record, and it really would not have been out of place on The Church's Metropolis [Did he mean to say Gold Afternoon Fix?]. "High As A Kite" is bright, poppy and actually fairly mesmerizing. In a perfectworld you would hear this every day on the radio but instead we're lucky enough to get the new Nickelback song.

Marty varies the formula a little bit on "Ask Again"-throwing in a spoken word-Lou Reed type vocal over a funky drum beat. Marty even has the nerve to have not one-but two songs with French titles-(even Sting didn't have the guts to put more than one French song on Ghost In The Machine) but we won't hold that against him.

Noctorum should please any fans of dark, atmospheric guitar rock, with lyrics that question life and its intricacies.

Mike Schiller of Pop Matters reviews Offer The Light

Given the prolific nature of The Church in this decade, it comes as something of a surprise that one of its members would have time to release music as part of another band, but that's just what Marty Willson-Piper has done as the vocal, songwriting half of Noctorum. Along with multi-instrumentalist and producer Dare Mason, Willson-Piper has written a rather beautiful '70s rock album, along the lines of Pink Floyd, but not too far from the band for which he is most famous. 

Offer the Light is actually the second album from the duo, and it sounds a lot less like an indulgent side-project than first effort Sparks Lane, evidenced by its fairly consistent sound and style, not to mention its lack of French-language tangents. It starts mellow and gets mellower, lulling us with soft-rock radio hits like the lovely, guitar solo-adorned "Alain Delon" and the rather beautiful "The Guessing Game", culminating with the seven-minute by-a-dying-fire strumalong that is "The Muse".

The burst of hard rock toward the end sounds a bit out of place given all the raised lighters and acoustic guitars that preceded it, and the gloomy, sinister "Already Dead" (which sounds oddly like Monster Magnet for some reason) is particularly striking for its black sheep qualities; these aren't bad songs, they just don't make sense on this particular album. Still, for those fans who haven't been able to get enough of The Church through the band's hectic recent release schedule, this second helping of Noctorum will absolutely hit the spot. It's a well-produced, well-performed set from an obvious veteran of the industry. In other words, Offer the Light is everything it should be.

Jeff Elbel of The Illinois Entertainer reviews The Afterlife

As the brainchild of producer/keyboardist Dare Mason and guitarist/singer Marty Willson-Piper, Noctorum has always exceeded its classification as anybody's side project .

Now that Willson-Piper has severed longstanding ties with Australian psych-pop mastersThe Church, Noctorum's fourth album The Afterlife can secure greater prominence as a worthy primaryproject.

Willson-Piper is a globetrotter, and these songs are peppered with global references from Tokyo to London even as others celebrate the comforts of hearth and home.

The sparkling "Piccadilly Circus in the Rain" finds beauty and fascination among the mundane in its urban setting. Willson-Piper writes himself, Mason and other loved ones into an endearing series of offhand vignettes during "In a Field Full of Sheep."

Willson-Piper's tumbling guitar arpeggios and Mason's thrumming piano are heightened by Richard Evans' stately trumpet, echoing the British-ness of the Beatle's "Penny Lane."

Mason's arrangement for the languid "The Moon Drips" nods to Spanish roots and arid Sergio Leone soundtracks.

"Head On" carries the gumshoe cadence and mysterious mood of a spy thriller, with a furtively daring flute.

Twelve-string guitar shimmers and chimes through the beguiling "Show," while its melancholy Smiths-like coda asks, "What's the use in us just pretending there could ever be a happy ending?"

A sinewy lead snakes through "High Tide/Low Tide" like a distant cousin to Starfish favourite "Reptile."

Willson-Piper lets his frenetic fingers fly during "A Girl with No Love," finding the middle ground between Television's slash-and-burn rock-jazz and the Cult's elemental thunder.

The album is available in multiple formats, crowned by a gorgeous gatefold presentation on heavyweight vinyl.

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Chimpanzee Magazine interview 2006