Marlon Magnee - Dark Star [LP]

After fifteen years touring the world with La Femme, Marlon Magnée now returns as a solo artist with a debut album, 'Dark Star', that reconnects him to his earliest passions.The record reflects his taste for unusual blends and singular styles: a mix of rockabilly, punk, cold wave, and psychedelic psychobilly. The tracks, sung in both French and English, draw on sixties guitars, an "orgy of synths" straight out of the eighties, pounding drum machines, analog delays, and a deliberately raw energy. His influences run throughout the album: The Velvet Underground, The Stranglers, Motörhead, The Cure, The Stray Cats, JJ Cale, the Nuggets compilations, but also French-speaking icons such as Gainsbourg, Les Rita Mitsouko, Métal Urbain, Plastic Bertrand, and Marc Charlan. The result: a fast, restless album (tempos up to 240 bpm), sometimes radical, conceived "for those with blood in their hearts and the urge to fight back." Co-produced with Renaud Letang (Feist, Manu Chao, Peaches) at the legendary Ferber Studio in Paris, this first solo effort marks a true return to Marlon's roots - and forcefully announces the comeback of rock in today's musical landscape.