Marjorine – Salton Sea

Nicholas Comaratta spent the last ten years playing in psych bands and experimenting with hardware-based electronic music. When the pandemic hit, he had to deeply re-think his creative approach and figure out a way to balance and marry the worlds he’d been liminally wavering between.

On the anniversary of Sgt. Pepper last year, Nicholas spent the night reading about the record and its creation until the wee hours. This deep dive made him realize that “if the Beatles could make all of this incredible music melding guitars, keyboards and samples back in 1967 with tape loops, then I should be able to achieve the same with a hardware sampler, synthesizer and guitar in 2020.”

With his new endeavor as krautrock project Marjorine, he’s channeled both sides of his brain, grabbing the listener’s attention with both the hypnotic guitar riffs as well as the driving rhythms that carry the track forward to an explosive shoegazing conclusion.

“Salton Sea” is the first finalized result of this new project under the name Marjorine and to no surprise, I wrote it one day after my girlfriend and I had visited the Salton Sea. The riff came about by accident. I ran into a wall while recording another track and just hit record and started messing around. The riff instantly caught me and I arranged a variation to make it slightly more interesting. Once the drums, synths and bass were layered I listened to the opening loop for about an hour before I realized where I wanted the song to go. I feel like the riff and middle vocal section were definitely subconsciously influenced by the Beatles, and the result is this weird shoegazey krautrock track that just goes and goes and goes. In the end, I feel like it helps me mix my love of colorful psychedelia and driving rhythms that carry tracks forward on some sort of endless road. 

Buy “Salton Sea” on Bandcamp