Marina Quaisse

The Legend of Sirena

10
10/10
Joel Frieders | October 7, 2014

My favorite season is desolate.

My favorite weather is cloudy and rainy.

My favorite music is often cloudy, rainy and desolate.

Despite what you might imagine my life is like with all of my kids running around my ankles, and my beautiful wife, and my spastic personality, melancholy is my favorite musical style.

Instrumental melancholy is up there with ethereal instrumental in my book, and bro, my book is leather bound and features a pile of inter-woven serpents on its spine bro. shit is serious bro.

My favorite French record label, Phonosaurus, which is home to Berry Weight and Dirty Art Club (*bites bottom lip and looks up sheepishly*), sent me this album from someone named Marina Quaissa a few weeks ago and I've been desolately raining clouds on muthafuckers with its inherently moody brooding bros. Holy chill balls on a Lite Brite from 1984 depicting an apple truck with a flat tire on the side of a country road, this is fucking perfect.

Removing the Portis from the collective Head, Marina Quaisse paints the humble with a desperate brush, and bro, what storm she's captured coming in from the West.

Instrumental introspection perfected, The Legend of Sirena borrows a mood from a page out of a book written by Boards of Canada and the above mentioned Head of Portis, but the strangs this woman be strangin' are as ridiculous as her fucking drum snaps. Seriously when the breakbeat drops in "In A Peaceful Deep Water", I'm both cooing and head-nodding. This is fucking fire.

The beat tapes I used to string myself out on never felt this classically mature and comfortably miserable.

What I'm amazed by most is not that is this the creation of a woman, bro. I don't feel exactly sexist by pointing out that this is on par with everything I've ever heard, and none of the instrumental albums that I have ever wanted played at my funeral were ever crafted at the hands of a woman. Is it a thing that's amazing about this album? Yes. But is it the thing? No bro, it is not the thing.

What I'm amazed by most regarding The Legend of Sirena is how complete everything is. There is an obvious beginning, middle and end to this shit. Marina starts off with the perfect "8th July", sketching a grey so thick it's mood changing. But by the time we get to the sixth and seventh tracks, that feature emcee Mattic, Marina shows a side of herself that are oftentimes THE ONLY SIDE of some producers. Some producers are only capable of making music for other people to call their own. Marina Quaisse just fucking dropped a brohammer on this motherfucking gorgeous corner of electronically arranged music, and the cracks in the rain soaked cement all spell out obvious accolades for just how fucking perfect this actually is.

I fucking love Mattic by the way. Dude always sounds like he's comfortable on the street he's walking. Even outside of his meter-driven comfort zone, Mattic is one of my favorite introductions into an emcee I had never heard before getting a full on boner for Phonosaurus Records a few years ago.

If you're a sucker for an instrumental (hip hop?) album to just leave in the fucking stereo for a few weeks because of how perfect it delivers your every days, buy this fucking album from Marina Quassie and quicherbitchin.

PERRRRRF.