Marseille Figs
The Figs began in the spring of 1999 as a kind of experiment in ambitious ineptitude and pop form, with the idea of finding a common ground between the 'amateurism' of punk, folk and avant-garde music. They played a wide array of odd venues and events, and they spent a long time in the wilderness, writing songs and preaching to the choir. They have emerged with a highly idiosyncratic sound, a devoted cult in London and Berlin, and an enormously varied arsenal of marvellous songs.
Marseille Figs are: singer and songwriter J. Maizlish,
multi-instrumentalist Dorian McFarland and secret weapon Tom Chant. They are
joined on The Dirty Canon by the legendary John Edwards on double bass.
J. Maizlish writes songs, sings and plays guitars and
ukeleles. He was born on the edge of a small town in California. He flew to New
York when he was 17 to become an artist, ending up at St. Martins in London
making films in the Underground tunnels. Through these he came to study under
Punk and Performance godfather Stuart Brisley, who introduced him to McFarland.
Dorian McFarland plays accordions, mouth harps, horns and
miscellany. He was born in Cambridge, and in the Summer of '98 he and Maizlish
exhibited in the same show in Marseille. That Christmas, he acquired his first
accordion, which he learned to play on stage with the Figs.
Tom Chant plays saxophones, clarinets and keyboards. He was
born in Dublin and raised in Lavender Hill. He's also a member of the Eddie
Prévost Trio and the Cinematic Orchestra, and he's played with everyone who's
anyone in the improvised and avant scene in London.
The Dirty Canon is the Figs' first full length album, featuring 12 new songs. Produced in Hamburg by polymath artist and Pogues-founder Jem Finer and Louisiana swamp-pop legend DM Bob, and finished in London with Brian O'Shaughnessy (of Screamadelica fame), The Dirty Canon has big booming piledrivers, lost soul singalongs, flophouse ballads, epic screeching skronking songs, monkey grunts, thunder and lightning.
MySpace: www.myspace.com/marseillefigs