After recently announcing his new album ‘Fast Idol’ is due 22nd October via Sacred Bones Records, Brooklyn based artist Black Marble, aka Chris Stewart, is sharing his new single ‘Ceiling’ with a lyric video edited by Alana-Marie French. Watch it HERE.
Chris Stewart shares: “‘Ceiling’ is about the persistence of memory and the fear of starting to lose the plot on what’s happening. When you talk to people these days, there’s a pervasive sense that we’ve lost a sense of shared reality and yet you never hear anyone indict themselves as being responsible. So this song just deals with the paranoia of thinking like, ok, what if it’s not them it’s me? Or what if it’s not me now, but inevitably it one day will be? And does it matter? ‘In silence for the words we leave behind’ is about holding onto meaning, but not any one idea, just the hope that it persists. It’s a recitation to ward off the thought that we’ll return in another time and be unable to understand the plights of the day, or parse any of the ambiguity that exists between people.”
‘Ceiling’ follows the July announcement of ‘Fast Idol’ which came with the release of lead single ‘Somewhere’, accompanied by a wondrous, uplifting video directed by Theo Sixou, which you can watch HERE.
Black Marble will be heading out on tour from this October through to next May. His Brighton concert will be taking place at the Green Door Store on Saturday 7th May 2022. Purchase your tickets HERE.
On ‘Fast Idol’, (which you can pre-order HERE) Black Marble reaches back through time to connect with the forgotten bedroom kids of the analogue era, the halcyon days of icy hooks and warbly synths always on the edge of going out of tune. Harmonies are piped in across the expanse of space, and lyrics capture conversations that seem to come from another room, repeat an accusation overheard, or speak as if in sleep of interpersonal struggles distilled down to one subconscious phrase. At the same time, percussive elements feel forward and cut through the mix with toms counting off the measures like a lost tribe broadcasting through the bass and tops of a basement club soundsystem.
‘Fast Idol’ is Stewart’s fourth full-length album and his second for Sacred Bones. His previous album ‘Bigger Than Life’ came out pre-lockdown in October 2019.
Stewart writes and plays everything himself, and tours with a rotating cast of players. Emerging from the early 2000s New York synth scene, Black Marble carried on the tradition of early synthwave pioneers like Martin Dupont and Modern Art who repurposed synths once reserved for expensive studios and stadium rock superstars. Available widely and cheaply for the first time, these synths became a staple for bedroom artists – connecting wires and twisting knobs into something that felt entirely new.
Black Marble on social media:
Facebook / Bandcamp / Twitter / Instagram
