Maillist
FOCUS ON: Marmaduke Duke
- Official Website >>
- Label: Captains Of Industry >>
- Genre: Rock
Marmaduke Duke are Dragon and the Atmosphere.
Marmaduke Duke are shrouded in mystery and their music is defying classification. They have been likened to The Mars Volta but also to Simon and Garfunkle. Stylistically, it takes in hardcore, punk, prog rock, doom, electro free-from jazz, classic singer-songwriter introspection....and so much more besides. For once the sum is greater than the parts; the cocktail far tastier than it looks on paper. This isnt hype or hyperbole; its hyper music.
All stories begin with a Once upon a time... and this one is no exception. Once upon a time Jorge Stibero moved to Glasgow from Portugal. A wise head on young shoulders he had no previous musical experience, but did have a masterplan to record a trilogy of albums based around a series of novels written by his parents:
The Magnificent Duke, Duke Pandemonium and The Death Of The Duke.
A musical triptych?
You could say that. Jorges parents were both professors of parapsychology and based the trilogys main character of The Duke on a number of people they had encountered over the years in their medical studies. The three novellas concern The Dukes slow descent into a madness, a deterioration that takes him beyond the realms of everyday concepts and thought processes and into the world of the untapped sub-conscious.
The Magnificent Duke charts this initial slip from reality into sur-reality and the discovery of three previously unknown sides of his personality to contend with. Like a text book schizophrenic, names were applied to these conflicting personalities. Each personality exists within its own self-contained world and has its own soundtrack. For the purposes of rock n roll simplification these can be identified as three separate entities: When the world explodes, When the world implodes, and When the world corrodes...
The Duke is born!
Brian Jessop was a musical prodigy but could never find anyone with the will or guts to make the kind of albums he wanted to - or, indeed, a label willing to release them - and had subsequently joined and left a number of bands along the way; a perfect foil for Jorge then. The pair met at a party on New Years Eve 2000 and found a shared ambition to make music that goes beyond the tired old structures of rock n roll.
Verse-chorus-verse....big album opener...boring fillers buried in the middle....no thanks..
In winter 2003 Jorge set about translating this lofty physiological concept to music with Brian on an eight-track studio, in a cow shed, on a Scottish farm. Additional musical input came from local musicians Mary Whistler and David Davidson.
Twisted minds for twisted times....
The plan was to make music that pisses on the traditional forms. Fittingly The Magnificent Duke takes the idea of concept albums and stretches it into strange and wonderful new dimensions without ever being hippy-druggy-mystical indulgence; in fact its pared-down approach and galvanised punk energy is the very antithesis of the indulgence, out-of-touch Arthurian-obsessed progressive rockers of the 70s.
Already described by Kerrang! as "a riddle dunked in glitter, a teaser absorbed in trauma", the ambition behind this on-going project is truly staggering, a journey through the twisted minds of a few individuals who have been able to translate ideas written down in an another country some years earlier with only the aid of a few guitars.
Of course as with all concept albums - from The Beatles Sergeant Peppers... to Pink Floyds The Wall to The Mars Voltas Deloused In The Comatorium - the true explanation lies within the music, the concept perhaps only truly understood by its creators.
Hyperbole or just hyper?
But thats OK. Because on repeated listening one thing becomes clear. The Magnificent Duke is a staggering work from a loose collection of musicians, a genuine boundary-breaker. Stylistically, it takes in hardcore, punk, prog rock, doom, electro free-from jazz, classic singer-songwriter introspection....and so much more besides. For once the sum is greater than the parts; the cocktail far tastier than it looks on paper. This isnt hype or hyperbole; its hyper music - and thats a bare fact, yo.
We wont be so crass as to use the words genius or classic - theyre long since redundant terms in the modern pop lexicon, over-used and worthless. Nor shall we use such regimented ideas of band and album.
This, quite simply, is music.
Only in twenty years time its true power become apparent.
