Marlon Roudette

Verbier High Five by Carlsberg - Verbier:
www.verbierhighfivebycarlsberg.com

Free entrance on the slopes!
Chalet Carlsberg, 14.45

Marlon Roudette’s new album Electric Soul is a modern classic of synthetic R&B. It is a true coming of age release from an established artist with a proven track record who has yet to receive the honor he deserves in his own land. This is the record with which he will achieve that. It is an album full of irresistible melodies and grooves, a collection of would-be hits, that nevertheless coheres like all the best long-players.
Named after Marlon Brando, he grew up influenced by soul and reggae, by artists of the calibre of Sam Cooke and Gregory Isaacs, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes, Denis Brown, and Hip Hop Acts like Talib Kweli, The Roots, Mos Def, as you would expect from someone who spent much of his childhood and teenage years in the Caribbean. More recently, he has been turned on by the experimental R&B of Americans and Canadians such as Frank Ocean, Drake and The Weeknd, particularly the sombre sonics (only minus the contentious lyrics).
He wanted a similar quality of shiny darkness, of noir sophistication, brought to bear on his album, a follow-up to 2011’s Matter Fixed. Above all, he wanted it to sound cohesive, and so drafted in the producers he most admired in 2013: Tim Bran and Roy Kerr, responsible for London Grammar’s If You Wait.
The songs were co-written by a few key inspiring writers from Jamie Hartman (Christina Aguilera, Joss Stone, Jason Mraz) to Stuart Matthewman of Sade’s band. But whoever he worked with, Marlon knew what he wanted the music to express in the wake of its predecessor’s atmosphere of bleak heartbreak, which had been recorded in the aftermath of a terribly emotional breakup with a long-term girlfriend: a sense of someone emerging into the light after the torrid, tumultuous night before.
“The song themes are much more positive on this album than on Matter Fixed,” says Marlon, “even though it’s still quite dark and reflective.”
He cites as examples of this more upbeat mood the track Only Love and the “Rave&B” of first single When The Beat Drops Out, as well as Runaround and In Luck, “which are about being there for someone,” he says. “Come Around is about having a spur of the moment affair, and Body Language is the sort of sexy number I’m not used to doing. So on the whole, it’s more positive.
“The pop songs are cooler, the cool songs more poppy,” he furthers. “I got the balance right on this one. But then, this time I had someone to bring those opposites together: Tim and Roy.”
He is especially happy with the tones and textures on this album, and the use of steel drums on several tracks, which he plays (he started learning the instrument aged 12), along with piano, on which he wrote many of the songs, either in Berlin or London.
“America was written in Berlin, and so was the original idea for Body Language and finished/co written with Tim/Roy. Runaround - the cityscape of Berlin adds something lyrically for sure,” he says. “Quite a few artists - Bowie, U2 - have reinvented themselves there. I love the history of the place. It’s a broken-hearted city - that wall split it in half. You can still feel it.”
Marlon - who is huge in Europe, boasting, with the Guy Chambers co-write New Age, the longest-running number 1 single for 30 years (eight weeks) in Germany, has yet to experience the same level of success he enjoys elsewhere around the world back home in the UK, where he lives in West London.
He is confident, however, that his second solo album will capitalise on the chart successes he enjoyed as one half of Mattafix in the UK, the mid-noughties reggae-rap-soul-pop duo whose Big City Life single reached number 15 in 2005 in the UK and who played to huge audiences across the globe.
“I took a long hard look at myself,” he says of the build-up to the recording of Electric Soul, whose front cover offers an appropriate late-night, ruminative, melancholy ambience. “As much as I enjoyed the anonymity of the UK after all the chaos of Europe, coming back here and getting the bus and so on, I did start to wonder why my records weren't connecting where I lived and made them. There was a lot of inward looking and stepping-up in terms of songwriting.”
He reveals that the realisation dawned that he needed to make a record this time that was more “him”, even if that meant showing him as he is: sadder and wiser and somewhat more careworn than before, with a richness of wisdom and experience that you can detect from his singing.
“It is more me, this album,” he agrees. “Touring added a register to my voice. With Mattafix I was either rapping or singing and my voice was quite high-pitched. A bit of age and wear and tear has given a lower register to my voice, and I’ve explored that tone on this record. It gives it more of a storytelling vibe, and a little bit of wisdom.”
There was plenty to age him over the last year or so. He unexpectedly had a child, allowing him to rebuild his relationship with his own father (artist-producer Cameron McVey, husband of Neneh Cherry), while his mother, a designer, found her home in Saint Vincent burgled repeatedly and had to move out. .
“It was a mental year and a half for me,” he admits. “My family background was already chaotic, what with my parents splitting up when I was one then relocating to the Caribbean when nine and then toing and froing between London - where my dad lived - and my mum’s home in Saint Vincent. That created lots of madness. Then I found out I was going to be a dad. I wrote the songs for the album amid all this chaos and insanity. This album tells the story of the last 18 months of my life.”
Using the best session musicians he could find, and his favourite producers of the last year, in a great studio bearing the actual EMI desk from Abbey Road, with mixing chores handled by Andrew Dawson, a three-times Grammy winner who has worked with Kanye West, Marlon has come up with a superbly accomplished album, teeming with songs that are designed to endure.
“It’s a priority release on Universal Europe,” he says with no little satisfaction. “It’s an incredible position to be in. I gave it my best shot. Tim and Roy gave me all the time I needed to make the record I wanted, even if it took 30 versions to get a track right. I pushed it as far as I could. And the result is the best record I’ve done, for sure.”
Electric Soul represents a dream of a lifetime for Marlon Roudette. Make sure you don’t miss it.



Go back