Marius Atherton - Music For A While
€16.66

Marius Atherton has been described as making THEE OH SEES sound like HENRY PURCELL, and Henry Purcell like SUICIDE. He should be classified somewhere between MATHIEU BOOGAERTS and ALAN VEGA. JULIEN GASC, THE SPACE LADY, and baroque music have also been mentioned to try to give an idea of what his compositions sound like. He himself more prosaically quotes ANNE SYLVESTRE, BACH, PERGOLESI, and FRANÇOIS COUPERIN as his main influences.

In short, this is music hard to categorize, even if some haven't hesitated to label it as "baroque synth pop." It doesn't really do it justice, if not downright misleading. Baroque synth pop? Like ARMY OF LOVERS? Come on, let's be serious! Marius Atherton and his music have nothing to do with two notes looping on a synth played by a hand poking out of a ruffled lace sleeve!

Let’s talk background... In Paris, Marius Atherton studied jazz and musicology. In San Francisco, he took guitar lessons. In Oakland, he was active in the garage-punk scene, playing with WE ARE THE MEN and THE BEEKEEPERS.

Back in France, he was the music curator for the Festival de la Cour Denis in Nièvres (between Bourges and Dijon). He has also performed in various more or less obscure international bands: STRATOCASTORS, DRY ERASE, WARM SWORDS, VAGUESS, GOLDEN Q, NICK WHEELDON'S DEMON HOST, TROTSKI NAUTIQUE...

For the little and strange story, it was after a Brussels concert of the latter that he ended up signed to Cheap Satanism Records; following a sudden passion for a cordless vacuum cleaner and a persistent lack of interest from its owner in exchanging it for an analog echo chamber. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

"Music For A While," only his second solo album in five years, also stems from a rather unexpected encounter; that of a song with carefully crafted and literary lyrics, mostly in French (English and German are never far off), and an electronic minimalism inspired as much by a '80s post-punk and approachable British experimental music of labels like WARP and TOO PURE, as by classical music.

A world apart, but with open borders, which remains charming and very accessible and doesn't require a heavy background to appreciate. While the references may seem niche, Marius Atherton always puts emotion first, sometimes noble, sometimes troubled, over the display of musical knowledge and technical abilities. As long with a certain idea of immediacy, and of a certain melancholy. Or perhaps a definite melancholy.

Watch

Listen

Marius Atherton - Music For A While
€16.66

Marius Atherton - Music For A While
  • Marius Atherton - Music For A While

Catalog #

CHEAP666/092

Pressing Information

12'' (Printed Sleeve)


Similar releases