MARIEMARIE | December 2014

It is a rare gift to see the beauty of creation in a wind farm. Like animalesque flowers, these steel giants sprout from the soil, grow up to be cyclopses, with fragile bones and parchment skin. MarieMarie – designated songwriter, singer and harp player – is one of those few gifted people. She does not fight against windmills, but transforms them into an intriguing song with a circling chorus and captivating tune: «Dream Machine», the title track on MarieMarie’s debut album.

MarieMarie herself is a factory of dreams, an energetic punk elf whose world revolves around music, be it on stage, at the studio in Hamburg or at home in Munich. When growing up in Bavaria, she listened to classical music, Greek folklore and Ravi Shankar’s Indian ragas early on. Aged six, she heard the angelic, sparkling sounds of a harp at a concert – and was enchanted instantaneously: «It is like we’ve been married for many years,» MarieMarie says, «we love each other, the other’s foibles annoy us, but at the end we are happy to have each other.» The harp became MarieMarie’s gateway to endless musical worlds: She explored it, experimented with it, connected it to a synthesizer and powered it up, played in orchestras, chamber music duos, rock bands and at the renowned Berklee College of Music.

Before starting with her first album, MarieMarie went on a self-discovery trip and dropped all old roles and songs. Successfully so, MarieMarie has moved away from her vocal idols Jeff Buckley, Ricky Lee Jones and Kate Bush and has found her very own expression. Her voice is intense and straight to the heart like a surgeon with a glass scalpel, her singing’s emanating both a glittering cool and a prickling closeness.

MarieMarie has created total freedom of movement for her ideas. And out of this fertile soil has grown what she calls folktronic pop. The varying songs are unusual hybrids, rooted in folk tradition with their antennas pointing towards electro pop. Natural magical sounds from a smorgasbord of acoustic instruments amalgamate with elegant discobeats and synthesizer sounds. Each song by itself is such a mixture of human and machine – a Dream Machine.

At Music Apartment, MarieMarie will present a selection of songs from her debut album, accompagnied and supported by her current live formation.