Review
Genre and Mood
Marbert Rocel’s Song For You is electronic music that wants to be a song: the band tags its work on Bandcamp as electro and indie pop, and describes Small Hours as an album of ballads at 130 bpm. Reflective and melancholic are this page’s words for an album that, in the band’s description, deals with love, lonesomeness and disappointment.
Song Summary
Song For You is the fourth track of Small Hours, the third album of the Leipzig band Marbert Rocel, released by Compost Records on 20 April 2012. At 6:23 it is the longest of the album’s thirteen tracks. Its credits name Marcel Aue, Panthera Krause and Antje Seifarth, the trio at the band’s core. The band made the album in its own studio in Leipzig and describes it as a progression from the early evening to the early morning hours.
Musical Breakdown
No review describes Song For You on its own, so this breakdown stays with its credits and with what the band and its label say about the album.
Main Section
Listen for Antje Seifarth’s voice at the centre and for the pulse under it. The band said its many gigs taught it to write ballads at 130 bpm, a club tempo carrying slow feelings; whether this song is one of them, and how the six minutes unfold, no source says, so this page leaves it to your ears.
Concepts in Focus
club culture shaped this album, by the band’s own account. Marbert Rocel toured Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland, indoors and outdoors, on roofs and in cellars, and said the experience greatly influenced the music: “This is the reason as to why we now make ballads at 130 bpm.” The year before, the band had formed Karocel with Mathias Kaden as a dance project for the Nachtdigital festival.
The band’s description also explains its approach to sound, a homely kind of sampling: “Our drums consist of a couch, a chest and a 1L wine glass.” Recording everyday objects and using them as percussion turns a flat into an instrument. Which objects sound on Song For You, the band does not say.
Artistic Context
Marbert Rocel formed in 2002 as a trio of Robert Krause (Panthera), Antje Seifarth (Spunk) and Marcel Aue (DJ Malik), and made their first albums, Speed Emotions in 2007 and Catch A Bird in 2009, on Compost Records; hear Marbert Rocel – Hush Now from the second. Small Hours is their first album with a fourth member, Martin Kohlstedt, who joined in 2010 and, in the band’s words, sits behind the Rhodes. In the Beginning followed in 2015.
Impact and Reception
Resident Advisor announced Small Hours in 2012; no review we found singled out Song For You. It is here as one of the owner’s songs of 2018. Put it on in the small hours, the time the album is named for.
