Since it’s only been 5 months that I’m part of the lovely disko404 crew, whom I’ve supported on and off over the past years as well as I could, the times are more than ripe to finally introduce myself to you, dear followers. In my 29th year on earth I sure have made a lot of experiences related to club music, music production, DJing as well as performing live.
It all started back in 2006, when I began producing sketches on Reason in slave-mode via Ableton. It, however, wasn’t until 3 full years later that I regarded these initial dabblings into production worthwhile respectively tight enough to be heard by or performed for others. So, as with life, I kept strong my DIY-game and played my first ever gig, however clumsily, in September 2009 @ Forum Stadtpark here in the cosy little city of Graz. I did make mistakes but I learned a lot from them. 2009 was also the year I started to get into DJing at the local club institution Niesenberger (R.I.P) after having portrayed the local scene on various occasions with my camera as photographer for the notorious Austrian edition of vice magazine. I started to spin records regularly at various locations all over the city and enjoyed progressing through trials and errors made in front of ever-welcoming crowds.
Musically my younger self was informed heavily by a vast variety of different sounds. In no consecutive order there was a shoegaze/noise/drones/punkrock/post punk-me, a hip hop/r’n’b/spoken word-me, a blues/rock'n'roll-me and eventually an electronic music-me. Naturally in my sets I’ve always tried to tie together some of these influences as well as possible, sometimes succeeding and more often failing to do so. Production-wise this background always already engendered that I sought to create sonically something that sticks out, if I may say so. Above all that, there always was and will be this passion of mine regarding moving images as well as their correlation with sound. Cinema instructs pretty much everything I do, be it as image-producer, as writer or as musician.
When I think back on it now, I have to say that the year 2013 certainly was the most intense for me because suddenly all those loose ends that comprised my becoming a musician in the end started to find a fitting complementary and thus enabled my growth in infinite ways. It all started with a chance encounter with a young German writer, Jovana Reisinger, who in the right moment enabled me to grow as an artist. We did some joint projects, but the one that should change a lot for me was an audio-visual installation piece as well as two live performances at an art fair in Munich, the so-called Aaber Award. Aaber was a three-day festival that gathered young artists, photographers, dancers, musicians and all kinds of creative people from pretty much everywhere in order to provide them with a space to present their respective works and conclude the festivities with three audience awards. It was then and there that I met Johann Steer, a Bavarian graphic designer who lives in Berlin and together with his brother Martin co-runs the ANTIME music label. He approached me after one of our two live performances, in which Jovana was reading one of her great short stories and I created the soundscapes that her voice was embedded in, and asked me if I had anything else to offer production-wise. We got along smoothly after this first conversation and so I found myself putting together a set of demos as soon as I’d returned to Graz.
Interestingly enough, at about the same time of the year, Simon/off also asked me to send over some demos for disko404, which I did. Both labels at that point signaled that they would want to put out my stuff, which left me in the difficult spot to decide which of the two offers to prioritize. In the end I decided to go with the album on ANTIME first, which is, mind my saying so, a rather bold move, and the reason for doing so basically was grounded in the complete artistic freedom offered by Martin & Johann. The latter designed the entire package, fonts, sleeves and all and kept me a 100% involved with everything he did. So, naturally, I preferred to use photographs of mine for the artwork as well as decided to write one text for each track of the album, which then were included on the inner sleeves. It all came out beautifully, was well received press-wise, and I’m still grateful to the fullest for Martin and Johann’s support throughout the entire project. They’re both just really good dudes and I heart them for all I know. I then played some release shows in Austria and Germany and also bigger slots at festivals (e.g., Popfest in Vienna as well as Transart Festival in Bolzano). I kept DJing here in Graz from time to time as well and eventually joined forces with all-time greats M.A.R.S. and Cheever to form the RDMH (River Deep Mountain High) collective with which we regularly put on parties at different locations in Graz.
disko404 meanwhile put out their 5th and 6th release by Ogris Debris respectively IZC and I was asked (again) to produce a music video for one of IZC’s tracks – “Zig-Zag”. I say again, because a year earlier I’d already produced a music video for Nubian Mindz’ “Vox & Cymbal”. Both videos came out really well, I guess. And so it happened that Simon/off, again, pushed me and the others to finally do the fontarrian release in 2015. The tracks that we’ve agreed on putting on the EP were all produced between 2012 and 2013. When it was clear that we’d be doing it, I had quite some hassles with retrieving all of the original Ableton projects, but eventually it worked out well. So I locked myself in at home in December 2014 for about 2 weeks and gave my best in producing pre-masters as close as possible to the original tracks.
“to desire the things that will destroy you in the end” was pretty much left in its initial state as this 16+ minute long, moody ambient excursion really, really means a lot to me. It was the first piece of music that I’d ever felt proud of having made. I clearly remember the day – it was in May 2012 late at night and I had been watching Pablo Larraín’s Tony Manero (2008) at home, alone. It’s a rather depressing film portraying Raúl Peralta’s struggles during the Pinochet dictatorship as well as his infinite obsession with Tony Manero, John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. His obsession cuts so deep that he decides to partake in a competition of Tony Manero impersonators hosted by a national television station. His only reaching the second place to me implicated that during such a dictatorship personal dreams are meant to be crushed, which exuded a hopelessness that I, at that point of my life, could very much identify with, thus the title, which I lifted from Sylvia Plath’s memoirs in the awareness that eventually she’d committed suicide. The piano touches in use I’d recorded a few weeks earlier at the local art school here in Graz on an old, abandoned piano somewhere in a backroom. The percussive samples were taken directly from Larraín’s film yet heavily modified and, finally, the woman breathing heavily from a rather awkward sex scene in the film. To me, however, it felt and still feels more accurate to be imagined as the heavy breathing of a runner who’d never, never reach the finishing line very much like the character Raul himself experiences at the film’s end.
On “cc’s glory (knocking down my chamber door)” I worked the most in order for it to become longer as well as more my own thing in terms of the samples I’d used. My starting point was Lou Reed’s re-written version of my favorite Edgar Allan Poe poem, “The Raven”. Reed composed a very minimalistic score in which Willem Dafoe’s reading of the text is embedded. The original song is simply awe-inspiring because the text literally becomes alive and it stuck with me ever since first hearing it. I’m really satisfied with how my version came out in the end, even though it needed quite a few knacks on my part, but go listen for yourselves.
“moon’s space, an aged dream” again was left pretty much untouched, because I was very much pleased with the overall alien atmosphere that I was able to distill from the moment of its coming into existence – imagine being in a huge empty house, alone, on an early autumn morning and everything around you, outside, is clogged with thick and heavy fog. I still am not sure why those four lines of Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream” ended up in the final version, but at the time I’d been listening often to an incredible live version of the song in which Mick Ronson simply slays everything, and I mean everrrything, with an other-worldly solo at the end. That left an impression of its own on me, every time anew and still does, as well as the lines somehow feel so alien and connote such an alien experience that just felt really fitting like the loop of seagulls circling around the entire track.
“give her another (ruff sugar, babe)” really was a pain in the ass to edit as it is based on various short loops lifted from the opening of a D’Angelo concert in L.A., which all contain various kinds of almost inaudible percussive elements – hi-hats, finger-snaps, claps, etc. – around which I had to arrange the entire drumming so that at one point I wasn’t even sure if I could retain to original feel of the track. I still am not a 100% content, but hey, it got that hazy vibes going on, which encapsulate the overall idea of a late-summer jam.
Due to unforeseeable delays at the pressing plant, finally, we had to postpone the release from June to September, which, nonetheless, turned out real nice. Up until now I’ve played shows in Vienna at the lovely celeste and Linz in front of OK-center during Ars Electronica with a live-set I consider the most elaborated ever since I perform in front of people. I’m happy with my setup and setlist as well as really enjoy reading a 4-page poem, consisting of lines written by John Berryman, an American poet, put into a fictional dialogue with those that are my own, to astonished people in the crowd.
So to wrap this up: I’m really looking forward to play a special A/V live show, entitled “Dreams of Avarice”, at this year’s Elevate Festival next week together with my buddy and VJ Jupiter Live. Then again, I’m totally excited to have the opportunity to be among this group of real hard-working individuals who make up disko404 – it’s rather a state of mind than anything else, and a pleasurable one at that. Moreover, it’s their efforts to create spaces in which to thrive artistically and experience something out of the ordinary in this unfortunately very conservative hometown of ours, which I’m glad to be able to contribute to in the future. Keep your eyes peeled, we’ve beautiful things coming up! That’s it, for now. Thank you for your time and maybe see you someday soon.
XX Marlon (fontarrian)