Black Marble Are A Different Arrangement

There's being lost in the past and then there's being lost in the past and that's where Black Marble fit in. These guys are so absorbed and obsessed with early synthpop that you would swear on your mother's life that their album A Different Arrangement was recorded in 1982 when the idea of a sequencer was the most windswept and exotic idea in recorded music history. As on might expect as a result, Black Marble are a raw, minimal, cold, and harsh synthpop group who make early recordings by OMD sound like 128 track digital recordings. They're depressingly impressive and the songs, while sounding firmly in touch with their inner Teutonic keyboard terrors, are surprisingly catchy.

Black Marble are so detached and so rooted in analog sounds that I'm very hesitant in believing that A Different Arrangement was recorded last year. It's too raw, to unpolished, at times almost more Joy Division than Joy Division and more synthetic than the Human League could ever hope to be. It's simply awesome stuff that's a throwback to when sounds like this were new and unexplored and much of A Different Arrangement feels and sounds like Black Marble are learning how all this electronic stuff works. In truth it's probably two dudes on Mac's and Ipad's recording while watching Big Bang Theory and eating pizza but it certainly feels old. It's funny and impressive how technology progresses and how someone today can intentionally sound as bad groups did in 1980. All that being said, and logic aside, I really, really like A Different Arrangement . It's brokenhearted detachment, it's sterile, cold, and minimalistic production just doesn't care what it sounds or feels like and that purity and honesty make A Different Arrangement awesome.

Synthpop has come a long, long way since the heady days of 1980. Yet, it's nice to know that despite the progress made technologically that the songs, albums, and bands from those early days are still held in such high regard. Black Marble are a living tribute to those times and A Different Arrangement is truly different today because it's a tarnished look back and not something sparkly and optimistic. This is a grim and gray record no matter how hard it tries to be happy and that makes me smile.

Black Marble Create A Different Arrangement

Black Marble are probably the coolest bunch of minimalist musicians to find themselves in front of keyboards in a very long time. Creating stark, bleak, cold synth pop the way OMD used to this dynamic duo hark back to the days when synthesizer technology was something relatively new and using it exclusively without guitars was almost considered experimental and odd. Their album A Different Arrangement is a perfect combination of that ancient technology and European detachment while still maintaining a degree of Brooklynite hipness.

Whether they're doing this stuff for the ironic nature of it or because they really love the early synth pop pioneers is a debate for another time, irregardless A Different Arrangement manages to be a fantastic album that sounds thirty years late to the party. Perhaps like a Magnetic Fields record played at 16rpm while layering 80's new wave on top of it, A Different Arrangement is a slow moving wave of synthetic pop that seems isolated, depressed and totally in touch with its psychological issues. Beats slowly pop while vocals sound off as if they were recorded in a hallway and the lush, minimal synths blanket it all in a chilly layer of opulence and aloofness. The songs, despite being rather un-energetic, are still memorable and danceable and Black Marble are so well versed at creating this stuff that they could very well be be OMD.

A Different Arrangement is the sort of record to get lost in a haze with and then never find your way out of. I love this record; it's clinical contemplation, lo-fi feel, and pseudo gothicism make it sound and feel amazing. Black Marble are awesome but in a brutalist, self destructive way. They don't sound happy, their songs don't feel happy, and their album is too sparse and subdued to actually be happy. None the less anyone in touch with their inner goth or Teutonic minimalist will absolutely love this record and find it an essential piece...like all that Bauhaus furniture.