📣 LAZY INTERVIEW #30 — MARIUS

21-year-old Norwegian producer Marius swoops by to take part in this laziest interview series of all time. It's Friday and it's just about a week since the musicmaker had his debut EP Existence Problems released via Pelican Fly, the independent Belgian label responsible for introducing Cashmere Cat and Lido to the world, while also playing host to various other electronic entities like French producer Canblaster. Marius is in good company. And he deserves to be there: influenced by producers such as these as well as the psychedelics of Tame Impala and an earlier interest in progressive metal, his music is a crazy collage of ricochets and refractions, ideas echoed and warped.

Previously known as Melf, this year's moniker change kicked off with inaugural track 'Easy', which unfortunately didn't make it onto the EP—it's filled with maddened energy, a charge of breakbeats and popping percussion that gradually gives way to a coda that djents with distorted metal guitar satisfaction, showing a brilliance in the combination of disparate musical styles and elements. The EP's title track shows a softer side with a plinky rockpool of cute quirky sounds that also rains down a bullet hell of percussion in waves of delicious incoherency; latest track 'Lame' mixes up kaleidoscope psychedlia with slow voidsome beats. So far it's a triumph of originality that sees Marius slotting together jigsaw pieces that don't fit together, making new dishes from the buffet of influencers that have come before.

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w h o   a r e   y o u ?   w h e r e   a r e   y o u   f r o m ?   w h a t   d o   y o u   d o ?

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My name is Marius and i am from Eidsvoll in Norway. I like to make music that I’ve never heard before.

h o w   d i d   y o u   s t a r t   c r e a t i n g   m u s i c ?

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I started creating music when I started playing the guitar. I played progressive metal and wanted to record my riffs. I had Garageband on my Mac, so I started programming drums and recorded my 7 string guitar.

h o w   w o u l d   y o u   d e s c r i b e   y o u r   s o u n d ?

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All over the place.

i s   t h e r e   a   p e r f e c t   t i m e   a n d   p l a c e   f o r   l i s t e n i n g   t o   y o u r   m u s i c ?

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I hope so! „
I like to make music that I've never heard before
” w h a t   i n s p i r e s   y o u   m o s t   w h e n   m a k i n g   a   t r a c k ?

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This is such a tough question. To be honest, I don’t know the answer. I think it’s a bit personal, and not something I can really put words to.

w h a t   i s   y o u r   m o s t   m e m o r a b l e   m u s i c a l   e x p e r i e n c e ?

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w h a t   a r e   y o u r   f a v o u r i t e   t h r e e   s o n g s   a t   t h e   m o m e n t ?

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Selmer – Surfin With U

Mindtrix – Moon Pigeons

Tame Impala – Reality in Motion

w h o   d o   y o u   m o s t   a d m i r e   i n   t h e   m u s i c   w o r l d ?

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This is another tough question. I admire a lot of people I think, but I think I subconsciously draw on a lot of influences when I write music. Everyone from guys like Flume to Lido, to bands like Tame Impala. My track on Pelican Fly, called 'Lame', is actually really heavily inspired by Tame Impala.

i n   y o u r   o p i n i o n ,   w h a t   i s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   m u s i c ?

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w h a t ' s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   y o u r   m u s i c   –   w h a t   d o   y o u   h o p e   t o   d o   n e x t ?

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I think these two questions I can answer together – as an artist I do dream that the future of music somehow involves something that I can contribute to. I think that’s a natural internal want for any artist – for your art to connect with people in new ways.

w h a t   i s   m o s t   i m p o r t a n t   t o   y o u ?

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• 🔔 Marius' debut Existence Problem EP is out now on Belgian label Pelican Fly.

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☟ Marius Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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← #29: WALTER EGO #31: TOUCH SENSITIVE →

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🐣 MARIUS — EXISTENCE PROBLEM

The energy! The incredible energy of this dense dynamo, the fizzling vibrating kineticism of it, the warped vortex devouring you as you listen, compressing your carbon self and in the immensity of it you become a tiny, tiny diamond. Some music feels like it washes you clean, others like this one have a great intensity about them that simply engulfs with its energy, which has appeared at this present moment as a voracious appetite for human souls. Aptly enough this track bears the title 'Existence Problem', and in the different elements swirling around – the plinking toybox keys, the dissonant collage of clacking percussive sounds, the warm slow-attack hoovering synth staccato – the problems of existence indeed are defined by their confounding multiplicity.

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☞ PREVIOUS MARIUS TRACK 'EASY' FEATURED ON YES/NO (June/2017) ☜

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Norwegian producer Marius Elfsted, simply Marius, ushers us into this multicoloured existential crisis, at first with these light chords, cute and childlike plinking, easing us in like a sparkly surfaced warm rockpool of sound with its mini starfish and anemones and little scuttly crabs, popcorn beats bubbling along and foaming fizzy—and then in an exploded abstraction of future bass formula we get this drop like a tidal wave, a low ghost-in-the-machine voice like an inner monologue humming a carefree tune to distract from the bullet hell of percussion raining down, the squeak of hi-pitch shoes-on-basketball-court adding a startle of electricity alongside the muffled warmth of that gruff digitised vox, splendid incoherency in its Dadaist collage of cartoon sound effects. This wave of intricacy crashes crashes crashes and in it is the glory of motion and sound and the hundred-thoughts-a-second madness of the mind.

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• 🔔 'Existence Problem' is out now via Brussels-based Pelican Fly Records (the people who brought you Cashmere Cat, Lido and other well known electronic artists). It's taken from a debut EP that will be arriving on 15th September.

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📠
☟ Marius Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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🐣 MARIUS — EASY

This one tumbles and crashes and thuds and explodes with organicity, a track that jostles with maddening energy, a multi-limbed cartwheel, a staircase of descending rhythmic rigid boxing gloves pugilising each step, a combination haymaker of a track—and this is all courtesy, mainly, of the gorgeous drums that essentially define this morsel of music. You hear them at the beginning, they stop, and then gradually here they are again, popping out with dusty vitality, muscly forearm ferocity, the raw hi-hats sheafing and swishing, everything breathing, even the underpinning bass sound is like a windpipe of superhuman exhalation, a robust didgeridoo drone that packs a punch as much as those grass-growing living cliff mental mountain drums.

Named 'Easy', this track by Norwegian producer Marius trundles along with flesh-and-bone breakbeats till its tectonic titanic end, when the cymbals rush out and smash like storms in the swaying doses of the new rhythmic 2-step-flavoured beat, feeling closer to metal with its juddering electronics like palm muted distorted guitars. It's a heavy finale. This in contrast to a soft beginning, those chords that fluttered slowly, a fragile innocence exuding from the thin resounding synth; in contrast to the far-off like a distant memory sample that sounds as though it's been lifted from a museum audio guide. The shattering shuffle of this track, its wicked rhythm, its full-blown tree-sap felled-logs life, is a joy of sound, and made even more sweltering in the wake of the shred of quiet that gleams faintly throughout.

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• 🔔 You can download 'Easy' by Marius, real name Marius Elfstedt, from ToneDen.

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📠
☟ Marius Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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