Marc-E

Sub Ek is the second cd release from composer/multi instrumentalist Marc-e. All the songs are his compositions and he plays all the instruments. Quite an accomplishment when you hear the variety of sounds he has come up with.

What impressed me most was how he has woven cultural sounds like chanting with modern computer generated sounds. He has succeeded in creating an audio collage to create some very compelling music. A striking example of this is the track “totem”; crows, rain, native chanting bass drops all come together to produce rainforest images.

“Rite of Passage” shows the pschedelic influences in Marc-E’s music. It could be said these images are somewhat hallucinagenic yet just when you think it’s going that way he introduces a Japanese Koto to take you down another path.

East indian influences are prevalent in this release. Sitar and tabla are blended with jungle sounds in “Jivatman”. Marc-E has a definitive style of mixing and sampling sounds that bring the listener into the music and take us on a very relaxing journey. The artistist is not bombarding the listener with dissonant or a-tonal sounds. There is no need

for this as his rythms and compositions are more in a supportive role for the images they evoke.

Marc-E’s music would be well suited as sound tracks for movies. As soothing as his songs are, it would be nice to hear them on a loud stereo system in a movie theater. Though not the bouncing disco beats this music would be very suitable to expressive dance. I can easily see a jazz dance group interpreting this music mixing modern dance with ritualistic traditional moves.

It would be interesting to see a movie producer pick up this music. It deserves a big audience. - Joey Scarfone