Marcus Whale has a lot going on: Collarbones, BV, and more recently, a solo production project called Marcus (Not Singing). Today i-D debuts To Be Possessed; an uneasy, breathless composition from the project that would ideally be played exclusively in St. Peter’s Basilica. However, if that’s not available, a blood rave — or your headphones — will do.
The track will appear on Harmony From A Dominant Hue, the first release from radio-show-come-record-label Body Promise, headed by angelic duo Amelia Jenner and Doug Wright. The compilation will share original work from fifteen producers from Australia and abroad, Body Promise write, “spanning hard hitting techno to breakbeat rollers to percussive club experiments.”
To celebrate the upcoming release of Harmony From A Dominant Hue, Amelia sat down to talk with Marcus about his prolific creative output and why Sydney’s still the best.
Amelia: Hi Marcus. Thank you so much for being a part of our debut release. We feel so honoured to have you on board. What’s on your mind at the moment?
I‘m trying to write this little birthday letter for my housemate and trying to paint these little vignettes that say something about our relationship but I don’t think I can really come up with anything that’ll do justice to her beauty.
What was the idea or catalyst behind To Be Possessed? Was it already written when we came to you asking to be involved?
After I finished making my last album under my full name [Marcus Whale] last year, I started making a bunch of heavier instrumental music on the computer, stuff I couldn’t sing over even if I tried. Maybe there’s something in there about being fatigued with the idea of writing. With that track, it was as a result, mostly, of listening to quite a lot of metal and craving its theatre and drama.
Is the Marcus (Not Singing) project going to be something you will be pursuing more?
I’d like to put some of these tracks together on a cassette, something really lo-fi and cheap, which is how it feels while I’m making it. It’s a bit adolescent for me, like I’m trying to do my youth again, but this time I’m a goth and I give spicy looks to hetero boys all day.
You seem to have a very high output across all of your projects — Collarbones, BV, Marcus Whale and now Marcus (Not Singing). How do you keep up with yourself?
The process of making new music with any of those projects is quite laborious and time-consuming, with a lot of downtime while we wait for managers and labels and agents to approve various things, so it’s really more like “when can we please get this music out, I might have to start a new project if this goes any longer.” Alternatively, if I’m being overly ambitious it takes a while to negotiate my wild imagination back to earth. No one cares enough about Marcus (Not Singing) for it to have to be anything in particular, so it’s nice and flexible.
If you were gonna make a compilation what would be your dream line-up of artists?
Not too different from Harmony In A Dominant Hue to be honest. It’d probably have to start with Jikuroux, maybe have a run of fun dance tracks like Habits and Friendships and then a dark, sodden back half with The Haxan Cloak, The Body, serpentwithfeet and Coil. And then maybe something by Tori Amos?
Sydney has been dragged through the mud a lot lately but I still think it’s pretty great. What’s your favourite thing about Sydney right now?
It’s not cool to be cool in Sydney and I kinda like that. People aren’t pretentious because there isn’t a lot of currency in doing creative things. This breeds a kind of eclecticism and collaboration that occasionally rears its head in a nice way with an event or an idea that defies the monstrosity of gentrification lumbering over the whole place.
Harmony From A Dominant is available Friday 28th October, 2016. Find it here.
Credits
Photography Jarred Beeler