Music for a good cause — Alex Marko’s Debut Ep Tranquility
If you’ve read one of our interviews with Maddy from Velvet Bloom, chances are you’ve heard Alex’s name – he is VB’s very talented lead guitarist. However, his debut EP takes his instrumental talent that one step further. Tranquility came about with an aim to soothe and inspire those who were feeling overwhelmed by the Covid-19 lockdown. Drawing from his surroundings, the EP is a flurry of calm and serenity backed with versatile soundscapes and guitar that could fix your covid blues.
With mental health in mind, the EP was released in collaboration with Flo Creative with all profits being donated to Headspace.
Alex, you’ve collaborated with many artists and are an integral part of Velvet Bloom, what initially drove you to a solo project?
I suppose as a musician it's always super important to channel your creative energy into something. When lockdown hit it was like watching the next six months of my life go down the drain, I'd been playing two or three gigs a week with Velvet Bloom for about two years and we had a lot planned for this year. So going from that to nothing was pretty intense at first but after a while I tried to make some sort of positive out of it so I started trying to teach myself the more recording side of music. I've always loved music with ambient noises in the background and I'd had a couple of song ideas floating around as well as 'Moonlight', which I had written a couple of years ago so the idea of recording my own iso project with a bunch of calming instrumentals was super exciting to me.
You wanted to make an EP that would sooth listeners and I think you’ve been really successful in doing that. The tracks feature a lot of sounds from nature. How did you choose what atmospheres you were going to use?
Thank you so much, I'm glad you found it relaxing. The process of choosing all the sounds was probably the easiest part of the whole thing really, they all sort of just came with the songs as I was writing them. I would just start playing my guitar and stumble upon an idea that reminded me of a setting or place, and then I would build the rest of the elements of the song around that setting that I thought it was depicting. Most of the places I was envisioning were places that I wished I could've been during lockdown, like in a big green forest or a warm beach, or a big grassy field looking up at the stars, so all of the images and sounds come hand in hand, really. The song 'From My Windowsill' was different in that I was watching the rain out my window while I came up with the idea of the song, I remember playing the chords for the first time while listening to the rain hitting my tin roof and just getting lost in a day dream, so that song is very much about trying to capture the feeling of drifting in to a day dream while looking out the window on a rainy day.
Notably the ocean plays a big part in your track ‘Waikiki’, how did living on the Mornington Peninsula help to inspire the soundscapes and the mood of the EP?
Living on the peninsula is so awesome, I've been living here my whole life and I'm still discovering new places with new scenery all the time. It's so diverse in it's scenery that it feels like you can go for a ten minute drive and you're in a completely different part of the world all together. Living here has definitely inspired the environment I tried to capture on the EP. 'Oliver's Creek' is named after this little reserve that was just within my 5km radius. There's a little creek that runs through it and it's surrounded by trees so I set up a couple of microphones and that's where I got the sounds of the water flowing and the birds chirping for that song. Me and my friends always go to this place called 'Devilbend Reservoir' right in the middle of the peninsula. I feel like the scenery of that place in particular is very much embedded in the EP, the picture of the trees on the EP cover was actually taken there a while ago by my friend Josh, who made the artwork.
Living in Melbourne, you’ve felt the impacts of Covid-19 and its lockdown more than most, how important was it to you that all proceeds from Tranquility go towards a mental health organisation such as Headspace?
Yeah it was really important to me. I'm lucky enough to say that this lockdown has been pretty cruisy for me, especially having a project like this EP to keep me busy, but for a lot of people the last few months have been really hard. I've seen how it's affected some of the strongest people I know and it's hard to imagine how it's affected people who struggle with their mental health. When I talked Maddy and Shan from Flo Creatives about releasing the EP through their bandcamp originally, I didn't know who I wanted to give the funds to but a friend of mine suggested headspace and the girls from Flo had worked with them before so it sort of seemed like the right option to go with.
You’re EP is souley instrumental, so if you were to put the message of the EP into words, what would it be?
Wow good question, I haven't thought of it that way at all really. I guess it would be to find the hidden beauty in things that seem shit at first. I know that I've found a whole lot more beauty in my 5km radius during this lockdown than I ever thought I would.
If Tranquility were a picture, what would it be?
I love this question! I actually think the cover art sums it up perfectly. Josh did an amazing job capturing the feel; a warm colourful day with the sun coming through the trees. Lot's of life. Shoutout to @sokeiprim_ for the artwork.
Can listeners expect more solo projects from you in the future?
Yeah for sure! This EP was the first time I'd written and recorded a full song by myself ever and the process of it has been a lot of fun. I'm definitely excited to do it again, I don't know what it would look like really, I've definitely had enough of ambient, calming instrumentals for now though.
You can find Tranquility here.