Black Marble

Photography and Interview by Drew Reynolds. Intro by Heather Hawke.

Fast Idol is LA-based Chris Stewart’s (aka Black Marble) fourth full-length album and his second for Sacred Bones. The album features glassy hooks and warbly synths always sounding like they’re on the edge of going out of tune, it’s almost as if Chris traveled into the past to the halcyon days of the analogue era to connect with the forgotten bedroom kids. 

Chris emerged from the early 2000s New York synth scene having been signed when he only had one song available online and he’s been writing songs and making music ever since. From 2012’s A Different Arrangement, followed by 2016’s It’s Immaterial in 2016 and 2019’s Bigger Than Life, plus two EPs also to his name, Chris carries on a hypnotic sound that seeks to channel the future while imprinting residue of the past. As “Black Marble,” he is known for being one to watch time pass by, the world change, and embracing the anxiety of it all. Chris writes and plays everything himself, and tours with a rotating cast of players. 

This newest album sees Chris return to a sentiment and process that defined the earlier days of Black Marble, a return to his intuitive song writing process from his early records, where the themes were guided by intuition and instinct – often, their meanings only become clear to him after they were written. There are some songs that land as impressionistic snippets of daily conflicts, and others that talk about people struggling with the challenges of trying to move through the world. “People don’t expect me to be responsible for altering their outlook or mood, they come to hear something that meets them where they are. I trusted on this record that if I stayed in that space and created things from that more mysterious place, it would connect with others,” he says. Fast Idol sees Black Marble face the rising tide of uncertainty, leaving our future selves to trace its signal as its frequencies echo into an interstellar expanse, looking for a receiver. He says: “I want my music to stick with you after I leave, even though you might not feel like you’re any closer to knowing it.”

Black Marble’s web/socials: Website – Bandcamp – Soundcloud – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter 

How has the last twenty months been for you and how are you feeling as an artist? Has this time away been a good thing for you, or has it been difficult?

Seeing all the hardship the world is experiencing has been difficult but ironically as an artist things have not been that difficult.  I chose to write an album during the pandemic and since I write by myself it has honestly been a good thing for me to have that structure of going in to work every day and just going through the routine.  As things have been improving slightly in the world we embarked on our first tour in two years and that was quite stressful, however all the different hoops we had to jump through and constantly being around hundreds of people packed together whether on planes, in venues, or even in bars and restaurants on mainland England where there are no sort of protocols in place made us wonder what we had gotten ourselves into at the beginning of it.  By the end of the tour we were used to it though and when we got back to the states where there are more restrictions it started to seem like unnecessary all of a sudden so that was an interesting thing to go through just from a sociological perspective.  Your feelings can change based on your environment maybe more than I realized.

Going back to the beginning of Black Marble, what where some of your biggest influences, and are they still influencing you?

I was always influenced by the ethos of early minimal synth artists who were taking synths which were cheap for the first time and using them to make new sounds.  I see this as a really different moment from the ‘80s moment where new wave became popular in the states for a while, which was more of a major label thing, and I think whether or not someone sees my music as trying to recreate the 80s or not has a lot to do with their own musical background.  I think when you see someone up on stage in front of a few hundred people there’s an idea that there’s some “team” of people behind the curtain that engineered it or had some insider info but for me I just took the idea that I could make music as well as anyone else and took my inexperience to be more of an asset than a hindrance and in carrying on the spirit of those early artists, I just kept at it. I’ve found good people to help me try and get it out to people and that’s about it.   It’s a very different idea I think though than the sort of ‘80s thing.  Getting lumped in with that is sort of the curse of living in the states haha.  For the US synthesizer music is very much associated with that timeframe.  But I’m still just as influenced by those ideas and hope to always be even as the music I’m making changes. 

What five things are you most looking forward to when you come back to NYC?

The food the parks the museums the weather the bars, the people, all of it.  

Which one song on Fast Idol are you most proud of and why?

I think “Streetlight,” because it for me represents a lot of things I aim to do with my songwriting all in one.  I hope to start somewhere and take you on a journey where at the end of it feels like you have to be shaken out of it a bit to go back to the world.  I hope that the place feels foreign and unusual and a bit mysterious, maybe a bit dangerous.  I like how the syncopation feels a bit odd.  I don’t know, with that one I made a place I want people to be.

What’s next for Black Marble, and if you could collaborate with any artist, or producer on an EP, which artist/producer would that be and why?

Im going to take a bit of time and work on some new production methods.  I bought a 32 track recorder when I got back from tour.  I’m not going to make music with a computer anymore it’s a drag and it just slows me down.  Looking forward to diving in and seeing how using old punch in and punch out tracking methods will affect my songwriting.  I’m looking forward to playing more guitar.  I have a couple albums worth of demos already that sound like Durutti Column so IDK what to do with all that, haha. 

If I were going to work with someone, probably AG Cook or someone like that who’s production techniques are so different than mine.  I was listening to some of the stuff he produced with Charlie and her vocals have like no reverb on them but they still sound so dark and punchy.  It seems like its all EQuing and compression and nothing time based like verb or delay or doubling.  Anyone who can make a vocal have a signature sound that is not corny using just those sparse tools has got some things figured out.