Marrow is an artist from Toronto who has been making music in different forms and under different names for over a decade. Recently, you might have heard him under the name Flux Apogee, which was a collaboration with a Russian producer, Ilya Id, who dropped the album Flux Apogee in March of 2018. Now he returns to the name Marrow, the original name he performed under from 2004-2008. There is a full length album coming later in the year, but first up is an instrumental collection, his third, Aviation of Pontius Pilate.

While the album wasn’t presented with a specific theme or concept, one look at the title and one listen to the album, and you can tell that this music is coming from a dark place. The opening track, “M41A Pulse Rifle,” serves to remind us what a ridiculously violent world we live in, when the gun from Aliens is made for mass consumption. As you continue on through the album, you get these stark, desolate beats with trap and industrial influences that add this mechanical discomfort to it. To a certain extent, I can hear an influence of early El-P production, in that they are both looking to capture this bleak dystopian state of existence with their beats. This isn’t an album to just sit back and groove to, it’s an album made to make you ponder the state of the world. Marrow also does a great job of using vocal clips sparingly, but to great effect, just enough get the wheels turning in your head, but not so much that it gets in the way of the music. While Marrow is steering the ship, we do get a few key contributions on the album. Shortrock provides scratches on a chunk of the tracks, which help cut the rhythm of the production and give the melody some extra flavor as well. The real X-factor on the album, though, is the blues guitar of Rei “Memphis Deville” Aru, who passed away earlier this year. Not only is his guitar playing excellent, but it injects this dark, sci-fi sounding album with a human touch that gives you this glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak soundscape.

I don’t know what Marrow has in store for us later, but for right now, he’s coming at us with some harsh beats that provide a soundtrack to a dreary time our world right now. It’s a cutting, dystopian soundtrack to a world that is desperately need of some love.