Review
Genre and Mood
Marbert Rocel’s Me, Myself and I is electro-pop and electronic music on a small scale. The feeling the sources point to is dreamy and intimate: songs that, in the label’s words, welcome you like good friends.
Song Summary
Me, Myself and I is the eleventh of twelve tracks on In the Beginning, the trio’s fourth studio album, released by Compost Records on 9 October 2015 as a double LP with a CD, a CD and a download. The songs first took shape in the summer of 2014 in a small spot enclosed by woods, and the band tied them together in their Leipzig studio over the following winter. According to the label, each decision went through every head and each chord was listened to a hundred times; there are no pompous string arrangements, only what the band agreed on together.
Musical Breakdown
Main Section
No review we found describes this song on its own, so this page describes less than usual and leans on what the band and the label say about the album. That text describes percussion tickling from synth pads like dew, a sound sculpted delicately rather than hewn raw, and Antje Seifarth’s voice guiding the listener like Tinkerbell past big feelings and small gestures. The track runs four minutes and 25 seconds and leads into the closing With Your Love.
Concepts in Focus
A synthesizer is Marbert Rocel’s main instrument. In a 2015 interview, the Dutch edition of VICE’s THUMP described them as a German electropop collective that gets everything out of the synthesizer that can be got out of it, and Robert Krause named Matthew Herbert’s Bodily Functions as a major influence on their early music and Thom Yorke as a mood behind the new album.
Synth pads also make an ambient texture: sustained sound that surrounds a voice rather than accompanying it. Listen for whether the pads here act as a background or as the space the voice lives in. The same trio’s quieter side is in Marbert Rocel – Hush Now.
Artistic Context
Marbert Rocel are Marcel Aue (Malik), Robert Krause (Panthera Krause) and the singer Antje Seifarth (Spunk), from Thuringia and based in Leipzig; the band’s name joins the first names of the two men. They design their own artwork, website and videos. Their albums on Compost are Speed Emotions (2007), Catch A Bird (2009), Small Hours (2012) and In the Beginning (2015).
Impact and Reception
We found no sign that the song was released as a single, and no review of it. Compost published it on YouTube in November 2015 with the album’s text, and the band later posted its own upload. Listen closely and decide for yourself what it says.
