Matt Marks is a composer/performer of emotionally manipulative pop songs and acoustic works. A founding member of Alarm Will Sound, he also performs as a French hornist with such acclaimed new music ensembles as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Signal, and ACME. He has recorded for Warp Records, Nonesuch, Cantaloupe Music, as well as many other independent labels. As a composer and arranger, Matt’s work has been called “staggeringly creative” by The New York Times, “obsessively detailed” by New York Magazine, and “stunning” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, The Bang on a Can Marathon, the Tribeca New Music Festival, and live on WNYC radio. Matt’s first album, his post-Christian nihilist pop opera, The Little Death: Vol. 1, will be released on New Amsterdam Records May 25th, 2010. Other recent projects include The Adventures of Albert Fish, described by Sequenza21.com as “brilliantly simultaneously creepy and funny”; A Portrait of Glenn Beck for the new music ensemble Newspeak; and an arrangement of The Beatles’ Revolution 9 for Alarm Will Sound. Recently Matt has been working with The Dirty Projectors on a live realization of their opera The Getty Address and on his first string quartet for ETHEL. Matt is also co-director of the BDSM-themed chamber ensemble, Ensemble de Sade, and is an organizer of the annual New Music Bake Sale.
-
The Little Death: Vol. 1, Matt Marks' post-Christian nihilist pop opera, is an ambitious new work that fuses bombastic electro-pop hooks, frenetically chopped break beats, hypnotic lyrics, and apocalyptic Christian imagery. Holding these disparate elements together is a unconventional narrative that follows two characters, Boy (Matt Marks) and Girl (Mellissa Hughes), on a journey through the world of Fundamentalist Evangelism, as they cope with repressed sexuality in a modern world.
The sample-heavy work draws on musical references that echo the character's sexual-religious confusion, including pop songs and gospel standards with evocative titles ("He Touched Me" and "When God Dips His Love In My Heart"). Marks took most of the sampled material from his own collection of 1970s gospel albums and classic hip-hop and soul recordings. Using a DIY approach, he produced the album using only a couple of microphones and a laptop running Ableton Live.
The stage show as directed by Rafael Gallegos takes inspiration from a number of sources, including The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and church lock-ins.
Donate to TLDV1

