Marlango 'Automatic Imperfection' album

Automatic Imperfection could have been conceived in a train which runs on an imaginary route through Madrid-Tokyo-Palermo. During these journeys, Marlango have taken pictures of the landscapes they’ve witnessed, the cities they’ve visited, and of the people and situations they’ve been faced with. Up to a certain extent, this has been the creative process of Marlangos second album. Automatic Imperfection is, therefore, the result of a long year plagued with journeys and concerts in which Leonor Watling, Alejandro Pelayo and Oscar Ybarra have been reinventing their music and been inspired by locations, faces and situations which have influenced these twelve songs. But, Automatic Imperfection is above all a declaration of principles. The title suggests an idea which is present in all aspects of life –beginning with nature- and which makes everything work, even if it’s through an imperfect way. Something good is always bound to appear from mixing the “automatic” and the “imperfect”. The work on a machine, automatic and perfect, confronted with a musician, human and imperfect through definition, is the beginning point for the album. Inside it, through its lyrics, Marlango accepts the world as it is, with its imperfections, but without resignations nor dramas. They contemplate with affection those small disasters of life which, in turn, make it all so much more beautiful. Meanwhile, on the musical side, Automatic Imperfection, is a natural continuation of their previous album. If their debut album was an honest and somewhat shy little boy, this new work is the older brother. Automatic Imperfection would be an adolescent discovering the world in which he lives and trying to make himself heard, at times with an uncontrollable energy, but always with an undeniable authenticity.

Using the same procedure as they did in their first album, Marlango have decided to record Automatic Imperfection in live studio sessions, with all the musicians in the same room playing at the same time. This process is the logical outcome of having been performing the songs at concerts during the previous months. The band did not reach the studio with demo tapes for their new work. Instead, they arrived with almost complete tracks which longed to be recorded. These tracks, in any case, were conceived from a piano and voice; the organic nature of both these elements were the ones ruling.

The musicians involved in this new album are practically the same ones which have accompanied Marlango during their tour last year. David Gwynn (guitar), Gonzalo Maestre and Ricardo Moreno (drums and percussions) and Pablo Navarro and Manuel Bagüés (bass and double bass) escort a Leonor Watling teeming with life which, not only confirms her talent as lyricist but also a dazzling vocalist with a variety of vocal registers exceeding the levels reached in her debut album. Oscar Ybarra has taken larger creative liberties with his trumpet and flugelhorn. His contribution is no longer a mere accompany for the harmonies of the songs, Oscar now plays with the melodic line of the vocals. Alejandro Pelayo has obsessively been in search for new piano sounds (grand piano, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes, Mellotron…) to establish a fascinating dialogue with guitars. He’s also been collaborating with Juan de Dios Martin in the musical programming and has co-produced the album with Jose Mª Rosillo. Together with the first-team players, good friends like Suso Sáez and Mate Almendral have also participated in different tracks of the album. The visual part has been elaborated by Galeriacreativa who have been in charge of the design of the album, and by Jerónimo Álvarez, author of the front cover and interior photographs. The videoclip of this first single extracted from this album has been directed by Rómulo Aguillaume during Marlangs last visit to Tokyo. To all these people we owe Automatic Imperfection.

THE AUTOMATIC IMPERFECTION TRACKS

1. SHAKE THE MOON

Squeeze the universe between your fingers,
It all fits inside a little boy’s pocket

”Shake the Moon is an angry and furious boy which drives you mad. A boastful boy who thinks that the whole world fits in his hand. From the musical point of view, the track is proposed from an opposite angle: the verses are the choruses and vice versa. It’s also the bands veiled tribute to the more swine and unrefined Tom Waits. This is why we chose to open the album with this track.”

2. DAYS ARE TIRED

Days are lazy,
Days are tired,
Days are wasted and lame,
As I am.

”This may possibly be the track with most affinity to the original demo of the album. It blended in straight away, though we first needed to find the definitive beat to the song. We very much enjoyed recording the musical programming which were based on sounds made by the mouth.”

3. TWISTED & SICK

The more you see, the more I hide,
The more I show, the more I lie.
But I´m twisted and sick, so that’s fine with me

”Twisted & Sick is a defence to the contradiction. With this track we wanted to feed our most vitalistic and hooligan self. Ironically, it may be one of the most classic tunes we’ve ever musically composed.”

4. CRY

Try every taste,
Draw every shape,
And cry.

”Cry has a big Sonic Youth and Mark Lanegan influence –both their albums have accompanied us during last years tour. The lyrics ask for things non stop, but from the conviction that they’ll never be given. There’s also a latent side of it, with an energy which looks as if it’s going to burst but never does. Cry is to hold oneself back when you’ve got an endless need to scream but are obliged to whisper.”

5. I DON’T CARE

Don´t get comfortable,
Don´t be scared,
I am careful,
But I don´t care.

”In a certain way, I Don’t Care was, together with Automatic Imperfection, the first brick of this album. It’s birth came from the need for a mistake, to do something more relaxed, ironic, without fear to harm anybody musically. Marlango does not renounce to the whispers or the screams. This is why I Don’t Care is a declaration of principles: Marlango is not rock, is not jazz, is not blues… And so what? We don’t care about the classifications.”

6. AUTOMATIC IMPERFECTION

But sometimes, somehow,
The moon finds a cradle
In traffic lights.
And it works out...

All the album is constructed from this song. It’s like that first domino piece –only one touch and you’ll bring down all the rest- the backbone. The lyrics are plagued with images, simple postcards or pills to ease the state of mind. The music inevitably transports you to Satie the Eccentric and was born, nearly without wanting to, during the recording of the first album. A curiosity: when it didn’t have lyrics it was called “Estocolmo” –more cold and clean. When performing it live there’s a sense of not wanting it never to end, same as Madness; both these songs are spirals from the beginning to the end. We love them.”

7. BEAUTIFUL MESS

Please, let me be,
No more, no less,
Than a beautiful mess

”Journeys, journeys, journeys… Journeys seeing trees pass by the car window, journeys where you see those beautiful disasters in the form of factories or traffic jams, when entering a city. At times the perspective changes and turns to “have you seen what a disaster? …lets give it a hug because it’s the only thing that’s left. Leys forget fighting about what we’ve failed to be and about the city that it is.” Beautiful Mess is a little like life, like love –we desire it but when we have it we discover how cloudy it can be.”

8. PEQUEÑO VALS

Would you mind if I just sit down here
And watch you dance that waltz?

”This song was born in Barcelona. In the end it kept its provisional title –Pequeño Vals- because it is formally a waltz and because for us it’s a small slight song. It talks about two people that work very well together but that will never really get to know each other. Not even the most perfect couple who dance waltz tremendously well will never be one. In the contrary to the rest of the album, the song brings us a sad sensation precisely because of the happiness that it hold within. It’s a very contradictive sensation.”

9. ARCHITECTURE OF LIES

Now I observe constructions round me
Architecture of sophisticated lives
Warehouses to pile up mistakes
Woodsheds to hide the dreams we give up on

”like the schemes we create in our head which can come piling down like a castle of playing cards with an unpredicted turn in life. Because gathering memories and experiences is a times to accumulate errors.”

10. TIP TOE

Tip-toe around your bed,
Tip-toe around yourself,
Tip-toe, don´t wake yourself up.

”Tip Toe is an uncomfortable lullaby, restless. Imagine an insomnia night: all the world sleeps and there’s nothing much you can do; you can’t make use of these hours. Your more laid-back side accepts this, resignation, but careful not to wake up your anxious self which will want to get up and begin to tidy…”

11. TRAINS

No matter how far I go, no matter,
I still find myself.

”No mystery. Trains is a voyage on a train. A powerful machine running on iron rails. You’re inside and can see how the landscapes change, the colours, but one does not change with the landscape. One continues the same. And that’s got a san part to it. Or not..?”

12. WRONG WAY

Time goes and suddenly I don´t understand
Why things are stuck to the ground
Instead of flowing the wrong way round

”A sunny afternoon beside the pool. All seems to be run on slow motion. We could be in Mexico, under the shade whilst the uncovered ground burns. We witness the sensations without suffering them, we accept them. Whilst you plunge into the pool, cushioned by the water, you notice the world…”

Biography

The Marlango Project emerges at the end of 1998 in Madrid, Spain.
Vocalist, songwriter and actress Leonor Watling, joins forces with pianist and composer Alejandro Pelayo, and record their first demo with fourteen songs. By the end of the year 2000, friend and trumpet man Oscar Ybarra arrives to Madrid from New York, gets enthusiastic with the idea and joins the band.

Leonor Watling

Regarded as one of Spain’s most promising actresses, Leonor made her first cinematic debut in 1992. Since then she’s been working with some of the very best in the film industry, amongst them directors Pedro Almodovar (“Hable con ella”, “La Mala Educación”) and Isabel Coixet (“Mi Vida sin ti”, “The Secret Life of Words”, “París, je t'aime: La gabardina roja”). With a considerable international projection at hand, Leonor has worked alongside Tim Robbins, Maria de Medeiros, Julie Christie and Sarah Polley.
She now also builds a career in the music industry.

Leonor, in addition to be an actress, is an excellent lyric composer and singer. She took her first artistic steps in several Madrilenian bands of jazz and soul, worked as soprano in chorales of Federico Chueca and San Jorge and sung in the gospel choir of the Anglican Church of Madrid.
During these last years, Leonor has also focused on developing her music skills and, with the help of Alejandro Pelayo and Oscar Ybarra, she created Marlango in 1998. The trio, embraced by the crowd and critics, are profiled as one of Spain’s most interesting music proposals at the moment.

Marlango

The upshot of Marlango bubbles over with honesty and influences swinging from the rock to the jazz music, from the music that was listened in any inter-war cabaret to the score of a film by David Lynch or Hal Hartley… The band have a distinct passion for the night, smoke and dark sounds.

Alongside Leonor, Marlango has two key figures in the band. Alejandro Pelayo, talented pianist with a classical training (piano player, composer and conductor), and Oscar Ybarra, skilled trumpet man who arrived in Spain from the States having soaked himself in the funk, blues and latin jazz circuits of Chicago, Miami or New York. The three of then found in Madrid the perfect breeding ground for the sound that they want to create as well as the fellow travellers who participated in their project: guitar player David Gwynn, bass player Mac Hernández and drummer Ricardo Moreno. They’ve also had luxury guests as Nacho Mastretta, Suso Saíz, Pablo Novoa or Miguel Malla and an impeccable production from the inestimable Jose Mª Rosillo.

Marlango have always been a very proactive band with constant live performances. The presentation of their debut album, self titled Marlango, took them on a trip through out all Spain, Portugal (Lisbon and Porto), Japan (Tokyo and Aichi) and Italy (Palermo).

The band are now currently immersed in a tour which is taking them across the main cities of the Spanish territory: Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastian, Mallorca, Granada, Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, Valladolid, etc.

Automatic Imperfection

After their extensive tour, which took them throughout all the Spanish geography, Portugal and Japan, the trio locked themselves up at the Du Manoir Studios (France) and during live sessions, recorded “Automatic Imperfection” (Subterfuge Records, 2005).
Marlango’s come back ” is the result of the experiences lived by Marlango during this last year, both in the studio during the time they spent working on their “Marlango” debut album, as for the various performances where the band experienced their first direct contact with their audience. On an individual level, their new album is also marked by the experiences which Leonor Watling, Alejandro Pelayo and Oscar Ybarra lived during their trips through Spain, Portugal, Japan and France.
The works of Calexico, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, The Doors and –obviously- Tom Waits became Marlango’s favourite soundtrack during those days and its footprint is evidenced in the sound of “Automatic Imperfection”.

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Marlango - Automatic Imperfection