King Krule | Feature Artist
Archy Marshall has been making music as King Krule since he was 15. It shows. Across three distinct albums, Marshall has created an atmosphere like none of his contemporaries, combining elements of blues with rap, punk, electronica and ambient to create a thick fog of sound to immerse oneself in. His latest album, Man Alive! is a perfect time to get into his material. A dense 42-minute opus comprising a honed and refined vision of what KK has aimed to create since his first EP. Songs such as 'Stoned Again' and 'Alone, Omen 3' serve as shining examples of his ability to blend genres.
Besides Man Alive!, Marshall's 2017 effort, The Ooz makes his ambitions to make an odyssey ever so clearer. The album is a deep dive into Marshall's ambitions, the concept of ‘ooz’ being described by KK himself as a slow process of somehow bleeding oneself into the world. This is how to best describe the record, melancholic and meditative, the sounds melting into one another to create a dense, heavy sound. The tracks ‘Dum Surfer’ and ‘A Slide In (New Drugs)', with their length and sparse nature, makes it a more challenging listen, even more so in the departure away from his debut, Six Feet Beneath the Moon. The 2013 debut is best known for carrying his breakthrough single, ‘Easy Easy’ (famously performed on Letterman here), but is still an excellent debut with plenty of great moments, which serves as a great starting point if you haven't already heard Man Alive!.
It’s also worth noting his live performances. Marshall has come a hell of a long way since Letterman in 2013 and has since evolved into a beast of his own. Having been lucky enough to catch him on ‘The OOZ’ tour in 2018, I can safely say the songs take on a new life in a live setting, evolving into louder, brasher and crushing ballads as opposed to the somewhat quainter notes on a record. Appearing at Splendour in the Grass 2020 (if it isn’t cancelled in the meantime), Krule is bound to have some sideshows announced. Be sure to not miss him, he is an incredible live performer.
Across these three records, we see Marshall's continuing ambition and will to expand and experiment, which all perfectly comes together on Man Alive!. With the songwriting and atmosphere perfectly combining to create one of the most exciting releases of 2020 so far.
All records are available from The Shop and could not be more highly recommended.
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Featured Albums: King Krule
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