New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Mike Marlin Official Website) Mike Marlin has ripped through 2011 being chosen as HMV 'Next Big Thing', releasing his debut album Nearly Man, touring the UK twice, singing disco with dwarves, smashing an office to pieces and vanishing for 3 months only to emerge triumphant with another 11 songs recorded in an undisclosed basement and mastered in Abbey Road.
Mike had 50 years to make his first record, and a reactionary quarter of a year to make the follow up album Man On The Ground. Working with a new producer Catherine Marks (known for her work with Alan Moulder & Flood on artists such as The Vaccines, Interpol,
Foals and PJ Harvey) Marlin recorded as he wrote, with Catherine providing a new form of muse in her piano playing.
Releasing Man on the Ground a mere 362 days since his debut in February, Mike has tours locked in for 2012 and is already working on new songs in the studio to keep to his pledge of releasing a full length LP a year until he, or the universe ends.
Somewhere in the midst of the recording process Mike and Catherine also found themselves in Dublin in the company of Eleanor McEvoy. Renowned for her virtuoso violin playing the plan was to lay strings over the new songs but Eleanor's whirlwind of musical ideas and inappropriate stories went way beyond this turning Travel The World into a duet, reworking Hymn to Disappointment and writing Steve McQueen together.
The recording process for Man On The Ground was spontaneous and reveals a deeper sound for Marlin, expressing a more personal and ambitious approach to his song writing and drawing early comparisons to
Badly Drawn Boy and The National. The songs push and pull against the tempo, the vocals stretch to breaking point and the instruments weave around Mike's baritone vocals in ways that can only come from serendipity. This isn't a pop record, sometimes subtle and sad, sometimes heartfelt and grand it's more a journey of songs and stories that were committed to tape when the feeling was right.
Mike Marlin is playing a number of acoustic gigs during January/February 2012 along with his album launch on the 15th February at Concrete London, where the winner of the film competition will be announced.
