Marble Sounds

Marble Sounds

album

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07 Oct 2022

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Le nouveau Marble Sounds est arrivé. During his career spanning more than 10 years, Pieter Van Dessel has never stopped challenging himself, pushing back the frontiers in his music and songwriting. Now, on his fifth album, he takes a more inward approach, going to the very core of Marble Sounds, which is why the name of the band is also the title of the album. “I will probably never get closer to the essence of what Marble Sounds is, and what I am as a musician, than on this album”, Van Dessel says. “Artists sometimes say they step out of their comfort zone, but I have the feeling that for this record I actually went into my comfort zone.”

A comfort zone that is largely built around piano and strings. Together with co-producer David Poltrock, Van Dessel placed three pianos on a stage: a grand piano, a self-playing grand piano and a self-playing upright piano, both controlled through a laptop.

“By defining the sound’s essence in advance, musically this has become the most homogeneous Marble Sounds album. A genuine album, rather than a collection of songs”, Van Dessel, who produced the record himself, feels. Within that musical frame he does, however, push the boundaries, from the Air-like electronic sound of ‘Axolotl’ to the neoclassical touch in ‘My Initial Intentions’. The lavish ‘Soon It’ll Make Us Laugh’ features a Bulgarian choir, and you’ll even hear Van Dessel’s young daughters singing along.

Pre-album singles ‘Quiet’, ‘Never Leave My Heart’ and ‘Axolotl’ already gave a foretaste of what the new album would sound like: songs that, developing around a mesmerizing piano, strings and Van Dessel’s velvety voice, flow into wonderfully lush orchestrated indie pop gems à la Sufjan Stevens, Nils Frahm or Damien Jurado. The singles were very enthusiastically received in Belgium and abroad, and ‘Quiet’ even played a big part in the final episode of the popular Netflix series ‘Undercover’.

As homogeneous as the album sounds, it’s the heterogeneous stories that pull you into the songs. Van Dessel sings about his wife (‘The Jacket’), the climate (‘A Drop In The Bucket’), regeneration (‘Axolotl’), breaking up (‘The Ever After’), living life at your own speed (‘Quiet’), and the kind of setbacks that’ll turn out to be great stories to tell later on in life (‘Soon It’ll Make Us Laugh’).

‘Marble Sounds’ is the band’s fifth album, and the follow-up to 2018’s ‘The Advice To Travel Light’. It’s Marble Sounds’ first album with Mayway Records, and will be available in all its physical and digital formats as of October 7th.

Supporting the release of the album, Marble Sounds will embark on an extensive tour along the best venues in the Low Countries in November. 

Read more

1.

Quiet

2.

Never Leave My Heart

3.

All Gone

4.

Jacket

5.

Soon It'll Make Us Laugh

6.

Axolotl

7.

My Initial Intentions

8.

A Drop in the Bucket

9.

Priorat

10.

The Ever After