I run this review here because I just want people to know about this… read on…!

music

Most original album of the year? Of the decade? What??? Of the day? Well, almost all of the lyrics are binary 0’s and 1’s. You can follow along with the enclosed lyric sheet. The opening track “01010011 01001111 01010011” begins exactly like that before venturing off into other arrangements of 0’s and 1’s. These are transmissions. As binary as these lyrics are, the music is decidedly non-binary, it fits nowhere. This song contains long horns and delicate pulses. Where are they taking us? On a voyage of uncertain destination. The ship adrift just outside our comfort zone.

The second number “01001100 01001111 01010011 01010100” is an instrumental you could almost dance to if your bones were gelatinously askew. Bouncy analog synths get sideswiped by scraping tones dogpiling up side-saddle, somewhat erratic yet always pulsating. The guitars never riff but they do bend (with Marmalade Duplex’s previous album being titled “Snot Bath” these really are the literal bends). Are they guitars even? Or is it all an amazing array of analog synths?

The 0’s and 1’s grow more emotive nearing a clarity of their own (not ours). All these 0’s and 1’s never wear thin (some also thicken with vocal doubling). I have been discreetly told that this vast accumulation of these 0’s and 1’s have actual meanings with some lyrics and titles reductively translated into “S.O.S. help us”, “loft commnctn”, “out of rng”, “pzzl”, “escpd”, and “where do we end up?”

Nearing the end of side one, we get a response from the calls of 0’s and 1’s. Actual words asking, “Hoagie barge, are you there? Are the members of Marmalade Duplex safe?” overtop of an intentionally Suicide-“Ghost Rider” template that transitions into a sci-fi seafaring drama melding. This is a most perilous journey.

To further muddy the waters there are three people involved in these binaries. Musicians Tyson Brinacombe and Brad de Roo are based in Guelph, Ontario, a mid-sized Canadian city, while the vocalist -noted cartoonist Marc Bell- exists elsewhere. Marmalade Duplex’s previous two albums had actual lyrics such as, “Hot fresh barnacles I said/I don’t know if I want you to go into the light/That sallow green light.” There the more eccentric aspects of The Fall were a musical influence, but here it doesn’t fall, it sinks, down below the vast mysterious depths. Marc Bell’s art on those first two records was elaborate and colourful; full of squishy, fine detail. “01001000 01001111 01000111 01001001 01000010 01000001 01010010 01000111” is rendered in striking contrast, further locking in the concept in near mechanical black and white featuring only a rendering of the hoagie barge, a sandwich submarine that the band members (not depicted) are stuck in unmoored.

Yet, after the emergency response, the music becomes heavenly synth plateaus, the 0’s and 1’s are delivered with coy bemusement, tickled to be here, galumph fish bass waddling along with kick drum and tittering percussion as we get further submerged. In the accompanying log book, written by their label Corduroy Palace Recordings, it is assumed that Marmalade Duplex may just be content to be lost. Have they made peace with their situation? Their label is seeking clarity. However, as a listener, when an album’s mysteries become unlocked the allure can disappear. For this album there is great joy in the confusion that, though carefully considered, may never be fully resolved. In frustration the label tore up the band’s contract then released this album in a limited pressing of 200 copies. They plan to release another Marmalade Duplex album in future.

-Robert Dayton
mrdayton@gmail.com