Marshall Art to release self-titled debut on January 2015

Posted on December 23rd, 2014

Marshall Art is a transatlantic band made up of Jeffrey Roberts from Canada and Mikhail Ivanov from Russia. Combining the cold structural beauty of NES chiptunes and the hot energy of live guitar, they play instrumental music influenced by post-rock, progressive rock, ambient and various electronic genres.

Jeffrey, also known as jmr, got his musical start by arranging video game covers on his parents’ PC in small-town Newfoundland, Canada. After cutting his teeth on the OverClocked ReMix forums and dabbling in their One Hour Compo, jmr began to craft original chiptune music using NES samples. He now writes using Famitracker, composing primarily for the 2A03 soundchip and VRC6 expansion. Jeffrey also hosts the weekly show Open Circuit on Arecibo Radio, and contributes to the concert streaming team known as MEDIATRON at MAGFest events.

Mikhail, also known as streifig, grew up in the Far East of Russia but spent half of his life in Moscow. He’s played guitar since he was 15 and names David Gilmour, Tom Morello, Randy Rhoads, Graham Coxon and more recently Annie Clark (of St. Vincent) as his primary influences. Mikhail has being playing in several bands since the early 2000s, ranging from industrial noise to rock to synthpop. He’s also greatly involved with VGM scene, and currently manages Dwelling of Duels, and a prominent Russian online vgm community.

This unlikely duo first met on THESHIZZ, a community of video game music and chiptunes fans based around the band Minibosses’ message board. They soon became good online friends, and eventually met IRL at MAGFest 9, the biggest american VGM festival.

Both Mikhail and Jeffrey share the love for the legendary band Chromelodeon as well as the pain of getting to know its music after its disbandment and never seeing the band live. The name Marshall Art comes after a Chromelodeon anecdote told by one of band’s former members.

The very beginning of the band is pretty much classified, so let’s just say that the band released its first original track in 2012 on the Chiptunes = WIN Expansion Pack compilation. Two years later, after several more compilation entries and the legendary hallway show at MAGFest 12, streifig and jmr are ready to present their first album.

The self-titled album Marshall Art will be released on January 24, 2015, right before the band takes the main stage at MAGFest 13’s Chiptune Showcase. Meanwhile, rock out to the single titled "Asteroid Driller", available to stream and download via our Soundcloud.

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