This latest 1 More Mix is brought to you by the unmistakable sounds of Marble Elephant…
The year is 2018, Tina and Baptiste formed Marble Elephant as a combination of love for each other, and similar music tastes. The German/French duo embarked on a mission to create music they adore and share it with the electronic music community.
As we all know by now, the journey into music is not all plain sailing, and Marble Elephant’s journey is pure evidence of that in every way. Their liquid and deep drum & bass projects have recently been released on the likes of Yamatai and Celsius Recordings, with their latest EP, The Lost City Of Edinkirk, dropping on the latter last Friday.
In this deep interview, Marble Elephant thank their mentor Humanature, responsible for a platform that both Baptiste and Tina recommend highly, DNB Academy. Being the test pilots for the online production mentorship founded by Humanature, Marble Elephant have since gone from strength to strength.
An experimental project in every sense of the word, Marble Elephant burst with pride to announce their first LP which drops this year, a future garage project that sounds extremely exciting, as you can tell from the chat below.
The story of Marble Elephant is one of grit, determination, passion for the music, and one another as they describe their journey in detail, showing that patience and consistency really are two vital parts in this industry.
Their passion for both liquid and deeper drum & bass is oozing through every sonic nook and cranny as you can tell from this exciting ride of a mix…
In the interview below, both Tina and Baptiste spoke about their own journeys into music before meeting each other in Brighton. They spoke about the importance of platforms like DNB Academy, their creative inspirations, the coupling of music and mental health, and what the future holds for them.
So get your selves ready, listen in and read on below. Stepping up and stepping in, the utterly infectious, Marble Elephant…
Hi guys, amazing to talk to you! How did the Marble Elephant journey begin?
Baptiste: Basically from the love of music made at first really. I’ve always loved music my entire life and have been connected to it in different ways. When I was back in France, I was going to raves with my friends, mixing and going to set up the sound systems. In France we have lots of free parties so I was really involved in the scene. When came in the UK, I discovered drum & bass and hated at first! Then I met Tina and she taught me how to like it in a way, she showed me jungle. It’s been a long journey, mixing in clubs in Brighton and I just wanted to mix the music that I make myself. It just progressed form there, me and Tina have the same kind of taste in music so then she suggested we do it together. We started learning producing together and it’s just progressed ever since.
Tina, did you discover drum & bass over in Germany or did that happen when you came here?
Tina: I came to the UK when I was 15 and I’d never heard drum & bass before, it did not exist in Germany at all at that time. I got to meet people who were more into bassline and people were still introducing me to different styles over here. I then moved to Brighton to go to university, I met more people and loads of people who were loving drum & bass, especially jungle. I remember going to my first jungle event at The Volks in Brighton and I didn’t know how to dance because it was so crazy!
There’s no right or wrong way to dance! So who are your creative inspirations?
Tina: For me, a really huge inspiration is Bonobo, I really love his stuff so much, it really resonates with me. In terms of drum & bass and jungle, I love TMSV, I think he’s amazing and I’m obsessed with Sully, he’s so clean and crisp. I really appreciate when artists know how to utilise having no sound, creating that space and not just cluttering it fully.
Baptiste: Since I got into drum & bass, Alix Perez to me is like the god of music, he’s so good at it. I like the fact that he’s producing most of his tunes with hardware, to me that makes it even better. I really like Halogenix too! With liquid, I would like to mention our mentor Humanature, the creator of DNB Academy, it’s thanks to him we’re here right now. He took us from a place where we just didn’t know anything about music and brought us to a place where we are actually something in the drum & bass industry now. We were the first people, the guinea pigs for DNB Academy.
How important do you think platforms like the DNB Academy are for beginner producers?
Baptiste: This kind of platform is very good for when you’re a beginner and you don’t know much about music. You’ll try to get your sound similar to other producers until you start exploring really and truly what you want to make for yourself. I find myself going back to it to get inspiration, for example, if I’m trying to make an EP or a tune and I can’t find inspiration, I’m a bit stuck, I’m just going to go back to the platform, look at some tutorials and try to get inspiration from what other producers do. This way, I can start a project or I can maybe finish a project. I would say the most important thing is just to follow your inner guidance on what you want to be doing for yourself, because following tutorials is great, but it’s not going to be who you truly are in the end.
Tina: I think it’s really important when you’re starting out to have something like that. When you start making electronic music, it’s so overwhelming because on a computer you have endless possibilities. When you don’t know about how music is made, you think you just make the music and you don’t know that you have to mix it as well. So having something like that is so powerful because it can really break it down and you can understand how to make it on a deeper level. With a course like that, where it’s well-structured, it builds up and it does really help. I think without that course, it would have taken us a lot longer to get to where we’re at now. I think it’s really key to have some sort of further guidance, because otherwise you can get lost in all the different possibilities.
Is this a typical representation of a Marble Elephant mix?
Baptiste: I would say yes, but also no because we do love to mix other genres of music. We really love deep dubstep but also liquid and sometimes we go very dark. Sometimes we might even have a newer tune in one of our sets. If we like it, we’re going to play it, so what we put in our sets, it’s just the music we listen on a daily basis.
Do you guys specially plan your mixes ahead or do you sort of go with the flow?
Tina: Right now for those kind of mixes that we record and put online, we do like to plan it because then we’ll just know that it will sound really good. For this mix, we really set the intention of mixing deeper stuff with liquid because we love those so much. I selected a bunch of tracks, Baptiste selected a bunch of tracks and we put them in order to how it might sound good. It was really fun, we really enjoyed this one as well.
Baptiste: We also believe that when you hear a mix, it’s good to hear different vibes. What we wanted to show in this mix as well is the progression from deeper stuff to liquid. Because when you are at a festival or something, you won’t really enjoy a set that is the same for an hour, it’s nice to have a little break or something a bit different in between. And then go back to it, you know. So we wanted to experiment with this and take the listeners on a Marble Elephant journey.
Absolutely love this, you could say that this mix represents your artistic journey!
Baptiste: Oh yeah, 100%. Our latest release was with Celsius and before that, with Yamatai, they’re a deeper label, it was a deeper track that we made with them. We also released a tune with Incurzion that was more deep dubstep, but quite harsh as well.
Would you say that Marble Elephant is an experimental project?
Tina: I’d like to say so, because when we started out, we didn’t know what kind of music we wanted to make at all. We just knew that we wanted to make music and we had so many different influences and inspirations. You can still see on our Soundcloud and Spotify, in the beginning, there’s some very experimental random stuff that I wouldn’t even know what genre to put it into. So over the time, it’s kind of been like focusing on liquid. But more recently we’ve also been really diving into like more kind of future garage music as well. So that’s going to be coming out as well at some point.
Baptiste: A little note on that actually, because as we come to speak about it, recently we officially signed our first LP with a massive label, and it’s future garage. We can’t tell you who it is with yet but you will know soon enough.
I can tell how excited you guys are. Love that, congratulations! How does that make you feel?
Baptiste: We literally started Marble Elephant for this kind of moment because it’s been six years now and a lot of things have been happening, but sometimes it’s been a bit slow, with nothing much happening. I felt like yesterday for me was like the confirmation that we were on the right path. It’s with our dream label, they’ve got artists that we love on this label.
Tina: It’s our first album, so it’s super exciting to have a longer form project coming out as well. Yeah, it’s so exciting.
Amazing! Can you tell us when this will be dropping?
Baptiste: At this moment, I think what we could say is that it’s coming out this year and they’re going to press vinyl, so that’s also a good thing.
So you started in 2018, where would you like to see Marble Elephant in 2028?
Baptiste: It’s so hard to know what’s going to happen because everyone in life, even if you don’t have a project, you personally probably don’t know what you’ll be doing. Something crazy could happen to you in 2 months time. But I think the vision and the hope is for Marble Elephant to be performing live way more at festivals, touring the world. We want to fine tune my sound as much as we can to provide the best music possible. Maybe a label one day but I think for now, the music is the main priority.
Tina: I definitely agree, having more gigs like that is so important. Just really playing out because it’s so beautiful to make music for people, and for people to be appreciating it and feeling emotions whilst listening to it. It’s one of the most fun and incredible things I’ve ever done in my life, playing out in clubs. Playing out a festival obviously would be the next level up from that as well. Also, in terms of our music, I’d really like to think that we would be exploring lots of different genres still.
How’s your summer shaping up at the moment?
I’ve been trying to get us some gigs, but it’s very hard. I think I do believe that by us making more music and being more like in the algorithm with Spotify, that might help us. I think that will give us more chances, right now it’s just difficult because we’re not so known but with what we have coming up and the year we’ve had so far, we’re staying super positive.
Do you think music and mental health go hand in hand?
Tina: Yeah, that’s really close to my heart. Because basically, for me, it’s been quite a crazy journey with music and mental health as well. I had anxiety and depression from like the age of 12, and when I moved to Brighton, I was listening to music every day, music was my guide, and it was beautiful. Then after a few years of living there, I got fired from a job, I was really ill, and so I couldn’t work. I had a gastroenteritis and a bladder infection at the same time, I was in so much pain. So that really shocked me to the core to the extent where I actually couldn’t listen to music on my own anymore, I couldn’t engage with it. Basically my anxiety and depression went in 2017. Ever since then I’ve been building my relationship with music more, so being part of this project has been amazing for that as well. When you listen to music, you feel emotions, they go hand in hand. It’s such a beautiful tool to allow yourself to feel the emotions. It’s so interlinked for sure, it’s huge.
Guys this has been wicked! Can you tell us about what you’ve got coming up?
Baptiste: So the EP is out now with Celsius Recordings it’s a label that we released our first EP with. Apart from that, we’ve got a single to come with Incurzion Audio, which will be liquid as well. We’ve got a two-tracker coming out with Lunar Recordings, potentially during the summer including a collab with one of our good friends, Dead Chef, who we’ve been producing with and helping him. Then obviously after that, the big LP, I think by the end of the year. It’s quite busy this year for us. It’s very heavy on releases.