We recently premiered the hot new bomb from LVCA & MARLON’s huge double ‘Estado Salvaje’ EP for Sock It To Me so it we thought we should dig a little deeper into the minds of the two artists that created this banger laden release. Surprisingly there is still copies over at Ba Dum Tish but there is little chance of those being around for much longer as the label has struck gold with this one.
Speaking to each member of this dynamic partnership from their respective locales it was clear that their beginning was of course closely linked to each respective productions, “I met Luca when I was 19 through a common friend who sent him a demo of one of my early tracks that sampled RU PAUL’s drag race that he wanted to release.” This only tells part of the story and it was not all smooth sailing but quite a funny story eventually led to them becoming closer, “Luca moved to the island this year (2017) so he invited me to your typical Balearic 2 day afters. I drew a penis with a red permanent marker on the fridge of the house he just moved into. He was really upset, I never thought we’d end up working together after that. But Here we are.”
Upon first listen to their release or even just one of the eight tracks from it there is a lot to unpack. Each track offers a huge amounts of energy and so many different layers of sound work together to create each journey. So, it was interesting to learn a bit more about the influences that go into writing such tracks from LVCA, “Marlon and I both come from live music backgrounds, I specialise in synths and live electronics. Marlon is a bassist/multi-instrumentalist that comes from a jazz funk background. That combined with our mutual love of different underground genres and a passion for hardware is what makes our sound.”
MARLON was also keen to maintain that there is a finely balanced synergy between the two while in the studio too, “The writing process is different every time, what’s important is the chemistry and the roles between us. We very much have a ying and yang thing going on, I’m wild and busy, Luca has a more minimalistic approach. He simplifies my madness.” This will possibly change now that LVCA has changed location to Barcelona but of course there is not too many kilometres between there and Ibiza.
With each track being quite different to the last and while the unique sound palette at work hints at a similar musical background LVCA explains that this is not exactly the case, “I grew up on 90s Italian house records and Dub. Marlon grew up on fusion, funk, Aphex Twin and Underground Resistance. Once we’re in the studio we don’t really think about our influences, what inspires us is the gear we have at our disposal and how to make these old machines work for us in a contemporary context.”
If you listen closely to tracks like ‘Lupita’s Garden’ and ‘Early Bird Gets The Wormy’ you will most definitely see big parts of both artists roots in there. With the two combining during one of Ibiza’s lockdown periods the chances to road-test these tracks were few and far between as LVCA explains, “Unfortunately, not so much until recently as we couldn’t really go anywhere. But other people have played them throughout the summer, mainly in the UK. I loved seeing videos of our tunes going off at various clubs and festivals.”
The two artists obviously have an undoubted link to The White Isle with MARLON still residing there and LVCA making the trip over as often as possible. It was no surprise to see a clear nod to the Balaeric hotspot in ‘Ibiza Sound Machine’ so it was interesting to hear where the name actually came from, “Ibiza Sound Machine was initially the name of our aborted live EBM/ New Beat project.
We were both living there, (Marlon grew up on the island) it was winter, we were feeling moody and got heavily into that late 80’s European vibe. We were experimenting with that sound and wrote a few tunes, that being one of them. It then became the name of my new label. The first release ISM001 will be out early next year through Ba Dum Tish and will contain solo tracks from Marlon, Josh Baker and myself and one all 3 of us made together called ‘Triphasic’.”
SOCK004 is currently available at Ba Dim Tish.
More info on LVCA
Facebook | SoundCloud | Discogs | Instagram
More info on MARLON
SoundCloud | Instagram | Discogs
