Conversations with Black Marble

Black Marble graces the cover of Verity Journal no.2, special Boy’s issue. From New York to LA, from Soundcloud to three studio albums, the melancholic synth pop of Black Marble continues to charm with its handmade tones. With an extensive US tour just under his belt and another one planned in Europe in early 2020, Chris Stewart still makes you feel like you just discovered a hidden treasure.

 

 

What were your musical influences for Black Marble ? 

 

Early on I gravitated towards a loose collection of artists that had a more handmade feel to their work.  I really liked early Magnetic Fields, Modern Art, Lives of Angels, Solid Space etc.

 

What would you say your songs are about ?

 

They are about all different kinds of things.  Little snapshots and moments of people’s lives mostly.  Impressions of spaces and places that might evoke some kind of connection.

 

What’s your everyday life like ?

 

My day is 70 percent emailing and 30 percent messing around in my studio.  

 

What are your thoughts about present day society and how the world is evolving ?

 

I don’t know.  I’m wondering if the speed and connectivity we now have now is going to one day spark our better selves once we wrestle with the constant readjustments of modernity that seem to happen faster and faster, or if we will just slowly devolve into a reflection of our worst instincts and frustrations.

 

For you, what is the biggest challenge we face as humans ? 

 

Maybe the push pull of having to eschew a certain level of safety and security to gain enough knowledge to engender the empathy we’ll need to survive.  

 

What is it to be a man today ? 

 

Maybe to think about someone besides yourself ?

 

Do you see a difference between men and women in the music industry ?

 

I don’t see any difference between real male and female artists in the sense of the way an artist thinks and how they need to make their work. This is a mentality I see in artists of any stripe that seems different from a regular person. But the way male and female artists are marketed and talked about in the “music business” is definitely different. Music is a weird game where you have your work you care about on one hand and the industry you have to interact with in order to get it heard on the other. There seems to be a real focus on female artists at the moment but at the same time female artists I know talk about how they can feel like they are being marketed as specifically a “female” version of a band, instead of just a band, which is a frustration I don’t have to entertain. If I feel misrepresented it’s more about the style of music I’m making or the mentality I’m bringing. That seems to be more of a male complaint, like, this magazine didn’t use my preferred micro genre when describing my band (laughs).

 

What kind of child were you ?

 

My mom thought I was so cute ! (laughs) I’m told that I was a happy little bundle of joy. And then when I became a teenager, I think I didn’t understand my family anymore, and I don’t think they understood me. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but it wasn’t working out.
I didn’t want to be different, I was trying to be normal, and this was just not working. I know those kids in highschool who are very much trying to be a thing, I wasn’t one of those kids. I was like “Why is nobody laughing at this joke ? Wtf is going on ?”, so probably I just had to leave?

 

And you found some people like you in NYC ?

 

New York city is very unique, young people see it in a very idealistic way if you’re a creative. Or if you don’t feel like you’re fitting in your town, you can go there and find people like yourself. So it took a while but then I really did and I felt probably really happy for the first time in my life. Except when I was like 7, because being 7 is really awesome ! But from my twelve years to eighteen I was not figuring anything out. Then I went to college, and I knew I wanted to be an artist, but not a musician. Maybe I wanted to do films, and I moved to New York to do an art school. I worked on some films and the people were really terrible, very mean, passive-aggressive and there was a lot of pressure, etc. People work that hard to be unhappy, why ? 

 

Why did you move to Los Angeles ?

 

In NYC every couple of years there is a new group of kids coming and the longer you’re there you can start to feel like “it took me so long to figure out how I wanted to be and what kind of art I wanted to make, and now the new thing is to do like this”. I didn’t want that to mess with my head. It seemed like the people who listen to my music were all over so I didn’t have to be in New York anymore. It took me a while to get used to being here, but after a few times going to lay on the beach, I started to feel the tension of New York floating out of me, over the course of six months. I feel more relaxed, I’m probably gonna live longer !

 

What led you to music? 

 

I had a big record collection and I would dj sometimes in New York. So I felt like I was in the music scene but I wasn’t part of a band myself. All my friends had been musicians, and I kind of thought that I would be good at it. But I didn’t really know how. And I always kinda felt like even if I went to school for visual art, the older I got the more I thought music was better. At some point I realised that “What do you like the most ? Your favourite movie or your favourite song ?”.  Years later, I went through a break up. And it seems like everybody in that situation would immediately go to a bar and try to find somebody else. But I thought that would make me feel worse, so why don’t I try to do something constructive instead ? So I started making songs in GarageBand just because I had the time. I had a girlfriend for 5 years, I can’t believe I spent so much time with this person. And actually if we hadn’t break up, I wouldn’t be here.

 Also I don’t think I would have done it if I didn’t have the motivating fact that I felt like I was important to make something out of the time that I have. I felt that way because I’ve seen so many of my friends just take the opportunity of that situation to just get drunk all the time, going home with random people constantly and just being a mess for months and months. And at the end of it, just getting back with their exes anyway.

And I was at an age when I’ve already been to every bar of New York, so a lot of things just came together. And when I started doing music I just kept doing it. The only thing that didn’t go smoothly is that I had to quit my career. But I didn’t really like that anyway. Black Marble is my first music project,

 

How did Black Marble start ? 

 When we first started, I didn’t know what to do so I just put our songs on Soundcloud. The way we got signed is somebody heard a song on Soundcloud, and he asked us if we wanted to put that on a record.
It was in my spare times and now it’s all I do, it’s kind of weird ! I was just expecting to maybe tinker around a little bit and now I’m basically doing it 10 hours a day. But it’s mostly not music but emails as I said (laughs).

You didn’t expect success ?

No, I mean to me success was if my friends liked it. So either they liked it or they were just nice to me and lied by saying it was good. But either way, I though “Ok they liked it so I’ll keep doing it”. Which I think is a good way of thinking, if you’re making art and you don’t know how to feel about it, unless you have bad taste in friends, you pick your friends for a reason, right ? So if you make stuff they like and you like it, then other people will probably like it, hopefully.

 

What are your personal battles ?

 

I just want to know what I’m talking about when I open my mouth. So many people have opinions they have no idea what the f* they are talking about. It makes me so angry ! That’s why I moved to New York. I was a shy teenager, but in everything I’ve done I’ve tried to challenge myself, to be a learning person. I feel like I’m still sort of guided by that, I just want to go places and see things, I try to understand the world.

Because I didn’t grew up with learning people, I grew up with people who said “this is how it is and there is no other ways”. So I knew pretty young that I wanted to get away from that.

 

 

Do you have a weird obsession ?

 

I don’t know if it’s an obsession, but I’m really into sciences and  politics but I don’t talk about it and don’t like to. But I know a lot about politics, I read like 7 newspapers a day! Just because I want to know what’s going on. 

And it’s the same about science. Why is the world here ? It makes no sense, it’s so ridiculous. For example, people think that reincarnation is crazy, the idea of dying and coming back as some other things. But we’ve already done that once, we are here now ! It’s hard to think about it now we are already here.

I think I’m really interested in space, string theory, wackos and sh*t like that, because it helps you figure out what happened ! Even if you can’t really know, you can at least gain a sense of it.

I have that weird feeling that sometimes I am in control of everything, I’m this big brain on top of a little body, and then sometimes I think that I am just doing what everybody else is doing, and we all do that because we were made to do it. And that is not that good of a feeling.

 

 

“Synth music : music organised around the idea that a synthesizer is a cool thing”

 

You do a lot of things by yourself, even for your videos, is it important for you to keep your hands on everything ? 

 

I feel open to outside ideas but usually I’m not happy with the results! I don’t like the confrontation that can create so I’m hands on a lot.  I’ve been really happy with the videos for this record, from Izzy Brindson and Ben Joyner and the one I made with my friend Ben Pier.

 

Tell us about the instrumental songs on the last album?

 

Yes, I like doing that. It is like some intermissions between the music. Did you listen to the album all in one go ? Because I’m trying to make a record that you want to listen from the beginning to the end. Every song is there for a reason and in a specific place for a reason. And I write songs just because I think that a song that sounds a certain way should go in between these two others.

 

When we listen to your music, it feels like an echo of our own feelings. Like as if it was only made for our ears, and it’s been weird to realize that other people listen to it and feel that too.

 

I always liked stuff that sounds like it was found on the ground and nobody cared about it. And then you listen to it and it makes you feel like it was yours to begin with. But a lot of people aren’t like that ! They just kind of like what comes on the radio, what their friends like. But this idea of finding something that only 4 people heard it’s really different. With my music I like to make it seem like a handmade thing. Like it could be a tape that you stepped on on your way to somewhere, you listen to it, it sounds all fucked up but you like the melody. Maybe the fact that you found my music on Soundcloud had some value to it and made you feel like it was only for you?
I just always thought it was so cool to listen to something that was so cool but nobody knows about it. Don’t you think stuff like that makes you feel like it’s okay to be different ?

Because this stuff you’re listening is different and it’s so good ?! And all these people around you, that never understood you, they don’t know about it and they don’t understand it. So you must have some value because you know this is good and they can’t even make sense out of it. So now you don’t feel so bad that you never related to them this whole time because you are just a different kind of person. This is your stuff, and they can have their stuff you don’t want to be around, and that’s okay.

 

Black Marble is performing in the Petit Bain in Paris on the 29th of January 2020.

 

You can listen his last album Bigger than Life, released this last October, on all digital platforms !