Record Review for MARV Keyboard Suite I

MARV Keyboard Suite I review

We’ve been compiling some short reviews of new releases from this year with the intention of putting them up on our site, but with so many projects going on we just haven’t gotten to it yet. We’ll post em up here for now, and probably do our regular end of the year there as more good stuff comes out.

Here’s Andrea on the new MARV record:

This is the second full length from this electronic duo, whose first record we played a lot in the shop. Keyboard Suite I delivers that kind of ambient soundscape which leaves one feeling relaxed and refreshed, although that’s not to say the record isn’t unexpected or unpredictable. There are rhythmic progressions, like a heartbeat from a hospital monitor, with broken percussion scattered, so it isn’t all a wash of spaciousness. You do get a sense of what you’ll be getting into with the gridlike black-and-white cover, though, and the music is expansive with clean notes and simple-seeming melodies. While Mort Garson’s Plantasia gets conjured up here, there are also cinematic qualities, like when a character might be having a moment of reflection in a film like Stalker, or in a Tangerine Dream score. The whole record embodies reflection in general, and it provides a nice reprieve from the outer world, turning toward a place of calm.