MARATHON ARTISTS (ENGLAND)
Written by Stéphane Mathé on 7 novembre 2017
THE LABEL
Interview with Jamie Hodgson from Marathon Artists :
Marathon Artists is home to some of the most exciting new music in the world.
We are focussed on discovering, developing and breaking amazing artists on a global scale.
Our mission is to create careers whilst never removing art from its culture.
Our passion is to partner with artists in realising their vision, making music heard by as many as possible, for as long as can be. We’re in it for the long run.
As well as its core record label, publishing and management arms, Marathon is powered by a special ability to navigate music’s ever-evolving relationship with technology, showcased by its own start-up incubator, Marathon Artists Labs.
Marathon is founded by Paul-Rene Albertini, Philippe Ascoli and Jimmy Mikaoui.
http://www.marathonartists.com
https://www.facebook.com/marathonartists
https://www.youtube.com/user/marathonartiststv
THE ARTISTS / RECORDS
COURTNEY BARNETT & KURT VILE
Ils partagent un goût pour les jeans usés et les tee-shirts flottants, mais plus encore pour un rock à texte, mariant avec brio douce contemplation, observation des autres et savoureuse autodérision. Elle, c’est l’Australienne Courtney Barnett, aux manières de joli garçon manqué, au délicieux chant traînant et au jeu de guitare saillant. Lui, Kurt Vile, est un Américain de Philadelphie dont la carrière rectiligne d’artisan songwriter sous influence Springsteen a fait le héros très discret d’un americana de choix dépourvu d’esbroufe et d’effets. Barnett l’admirait depuis toujours, lui est tombé à la renverse en l’entendant. C’est dire si ces deux-là étaient faits pour s’entendre. Une conversation musicale s’est donc engagée, un titre, puis deux, et, en quelques séances espacées à Melbourne, un album a été gravé en toute simplicité. Courtney reprend une chanson de Kurt et vice versa (avec une interprétation en duo du Outta the woodwork de l’Australienne), des reprises s’imposent (de Belly ou de Jen Cloher, la compagne de Barnett) et des titres inachevés de l’un se retrouvent naturellement complétés par les trouvailles de l’autre. Ça donne, entre autres, Continental Breakfast, joyeux récit countrysant de cette amitié naissante mais évidente entre deux continents. Le résultat est un album d’une délicieusement rugueuse fluidité, comme si Neil Young s’était dédoublé le temps d’un de ces albums brillamment expédiés dont il a le secret. Drôle de disque pour une belle rencontre.
Hugo Cassavetti (Telerama)
More infos : http://courtneybarnettandkurtvile.com
CHILDHOOD
Being surrounded by soul music, classic pop songs and music with any form of groove all my life, these influences began to speak for themselves within these new songs Childhood were writing. They are a lot more deliberate in concept and sound than Lacuna, which I think was an important step forward for the band.
We love what we had achieved sonically and collectively with the first record. However to challenge ourselves to find more about what we wanted from music I think we needed a period of rediscovery and commitment to what really made us tick as music fans and musicians. This record marks an honest appraisal of our commitment to our, I guess, ‘ethereal’ sound but seeks to show that this can be celebrated through other forms of popular music.
Once we realised that we didn’t have to send something out to space and back to get this desired effect, we started realising that soul, pop, the basics had all we were looking for all along in those early days.
More infos : http://www.childhoodband.com
JAGWAR MA
Jen Cloher is the culmination of a period of artistic and personal growth in which the artist took her rightful place as the punk-rock figurehead of Melbourne’s famous DIY music scene. The NIDA Graduate is an outspoken advocate for artist rights and the co-founder of the incredible Milk! Records label (Courtney Barnett, Loose Tooth, Fraser A. Gorman, Jade Imagine, East Brunswick All Girls Choir). Cloher’s fascinating life-story and compelling political voice is enough justification to pay her attention, but it’s the music that will have you returning again and again.
Since 2014, Jen’s regular musical contributions to Milk! Record’s discography of 7″ releases and compilations have been increasingly biting, witty and poetic. It’s fair to say that she was in a purple patch when she put the finishing touches to her stunning new record with engineer Greg Walker amidst the rolling greenery of Jumbunna in Victoria’s Gippsland. The band that first played together four years ago on Cloher’s acclaimed third album, the Australian Music Prize nominated In Blood Memory, are bold and assured, the songs split by Courtney Barnett’s extraordinary lead-guitar and anchored by the rhythm section of Bones Sloane and Jen Sholakis. The record was completed in March 2017 with Tom Schick at Jeff Tweedy’s famous ‘Loft’ Studios in the depths of Chicago’s winter.
“I feel so small / my feet can barely touch the floor / on the bus where everybody is tall,” she sings softly and with caution, as she begin the album with “The Embers.” Driving punk drums pry her song open, exploding it into an anthem that pushes back at entitled people who make others feel tiny. “I’m just a small fish / and you’re a shark that hates everything,” she sings, repeating that line and over and over with strength and power. “I’ve been hiding in the smallest space / I am dying to go / this is not my home,” Tamko starts carefully on “Fear & Force,” before her finger-picked guitar playing gives way to slow-building synth claps and ethereal harmonies. “Mal á L’aise” is one of the album’s focal points, a five-minute meditation of ambient dream pop, featuring Tamko’s usage of samples; some are samples from a Steve Sobs song on which Tamko was featured, enticing the one writing collaboration of the album. “Mal á L’aise” means “discomfort” in French, Tamko’s first language, and throughout the song she works through different meanings of that word: social, cultural, physical.
Infinite Worlds builds upon Tamko’s stripped-down demos that have been circulating online and throughout the independent music community for the past two years. Her Persian Garden cassette, released in 2014 via Miscreant Records, was a lo-fi collection where she embraced a first-thought best-thought approach, making songs that began with just her voice and guitar. But here, Tamko is a main performer of synths, keyboard, guitars, and drums, at times enlisting the work of session studio musicians. This had Tamko channeling the thoughtfulness of her lyricism into her arrangement and production as well. The result is a wide-ranging eight-song collection that’s pleasantly unclassifiable: hypnotic electronic collages, acoustic ballads, and bursts of bright punk sit sideby- side cohesively, all tied together by Tamko’s soaring voice.
“I write a lot about places, archiving my memories in spaces that I used to be in, spaces I am currently in, or spaces I will eventually be in” she says. “Archiving different moments that I’ve been thinking about, have gone through. It’s not always autobiographical though. It could be about different situations I’ve seen people I love in. Or people I don’t know in. I think that comes a lot from being in different environments. Like growing up in Cameroon. There, we are happy with very little. Then moving here and seeing how the culture differs from where i’m from.”
More infos : https://vagabonvagabon.com/
HAZEL ENGLISH
Pour certains, la dream pop est un peu le pipi de chat de l’indie rock, une musique gentillette et apathique, voire neurasthénique, qui peine à maintenir éveillé. Ceux-là devront se tenir éloignés de l’Australienne installée à San Francisco Hazel English et de son songwriting particulièrement candide, renforcé par un discours un brin naïf : «Savoir que j’ai créé quelque chose qui a eu un effet sur la vie de quelqu’un d’autre, m’a soufflée. C’est vraiment chouette d’entendre quelqu’un dire : « Ta chanson m’a aidé cette semaine ».» Pourtant, mièvreries mises de côté, sa musique parvient à trouver l’équilibre étrange qui fait de sa dream-pop une musique hypnotique, entre efficacité mélodique et détachement cool qui projette l’esprit dans un autre espace-temps cotonneux où il se laisse bercer, comme rasséréné.
Vendu comme un premier album, mais regroupant en réalité son premier EP paru en 2016 et six titres inédits, Just Give in / Never Going Home est la synthèse idéale de la musique d’Hazel. Entre les deux groupes de chansons, composées avec l’aide du musicien Day Wave, pas de différence majeure.
On retrouve la même ambiance délicate, les mêmes compositions alanguies caressées par un soleil assez puissant pour plonger dans une torpeur enveloppante. Une douce sensation qui contraste avec une certaine noirceur adolescente des textes, annoncée par des titres comme Love Is Dead ou Never Going Home. Bref, voilà un disque à la force tranquille qui accompagnera à merveille les sessions hamac. (Francois Blanc / Liberation)
More infos : http://hazelenglish.com/
POND
Man It Feels Like Space Again was recorded in Melbourne Australia and once again mixed by buddy Kevin Parker. The band showcased MIFLSA songs throughout their first headline tour of the US in October. Starting at a festival in Mexico, heading to New England, traipsing through Canada, and back down the west coast, POND pondered, why stop there? After their sold-out Los Angeles Halloween show, POND ventured south to play music festivals in South America, where audiences exploded upon hearing MIFLSA’s hits and partied-hard with the melodious entertainers.
Hailing from Perth, Australia’s POND formed in 2008 after good friends Joseph Ryan (Mink Mussel Creek), Nick Allbrook (Mink Mussel Creek, Allbrook/Avery, Tame Impala, Peter Bibby & His Bottles of Confidence), and Jay Watson (Tame Impala) hit upon the idea of an all inclusive, ego-free collaborative, so the boys immediately recorded their debut album Psychedelic Mango with a little help from good friend Kevin Parker (Tame Impala).
Upon Beard, Wives, Denim release in March 2012, global attention shined it’s light upon the Perth gang. A North American tour ensued, smashing through 31 shows – including 8 at South by South West – where they were one of the most talked about bands of the festival. From there, they returned home to Australia and sold out a national tour before storming UK and Europe, causing NME to tout them as the “hottest band in the world right now” as well as proclaiming Beard, Wives, Denim as “quite possibly the best album released so far this year.”
In August 2013, POND gifted to the world their 5th LP in as many years, Hobo Rocket. Hobo Rocket is 40 minutes of perfectly imperfect emotion, challenging veteran listeners and music reviewers with an evolved and vigorous sound. Singer Nick Allbrook describes the release as the “…kind of mindset of finding our own little place in music, and being more of a functioning band, which is what makes it noisier and denser. This one we went as brutally hard as we would at a show. We wanted the songs to sound loose and live.”
Enthusiasts and music aficionados world-wide agree MIFLSA is POND’s most focused composition to date. This mirrors their touring efforts, dynamic and enthralling live show, media buzz and essentially, the maturation of a musical career a long time in the making. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing growing up, especially when it’s this much fun!
More infos : http://www.pondband.net
