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 Bay Area's indie powerhouse label, Heiro Imperium, has recently expanded their roster by signing a new musician by the name of Chris Marsol.
Marsol is not the typical rapper most indie hip-hop labels would sign. He fuses a mixture of musical genres, including rock, soul, pop and electro.
Via the new deal, the artist prepares his self-produced debut album, Butterflies, Lipstick and Handgrenades, where "no two tracks sound the same," according to the label.
Marsol and his band made this record the old-fashioned way: they got together at FM studios in Berkeley, CA.
"It was a 24 hour recording session split up into two days," he explained. "Before the session, we rehearsed over a period of months to solidify the arrangements. Then we all tracked our parts simultaneously, in one huge recording room so the music had an organic sound. We recorded it exactly the way we play it live at shows."
How did this rock artist end up on one of the Bay Area's most esteemed hip-hop labels? "In 2007, my business partner gave Hiero's owner Tajai (of Souls of Mischief) some of my music. Unknown to us, Tajai had been listening to it while on tour. When he got back, a meeting was set up and we decided to work together."
"I want my label to represent quality music in general, not just underground rap," said Tajai, founder of Clear Label Records. "Chris has talent and energy that the world needs to see."
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of Haight-Ashbury, Marsol is the product of the hippie movement -- Psychedelic Rock, the Black Panthers. Admittedly, he wasn't around during the revolution, but the spirit of art, freedom, and progressive thinking still illuminates the Bay Area -- and Marsol's music.
"As a child, I didn't discriminate between genres of music," he explains, whose fave artists include Pink Floyd, Cream, Stevie Wonder, Nirvana, Genesis, Stone Temple Pilots, D'Angelo, Radiohead, and Hall and Oates among others. "I only distinguished between what I liked and what I didn't like."
At 6, Chris was singing in his church choir and stealing the spotlight, dancing at his family reunions. By 11, he was locking himself in the bathroom, writing and recording his first songs with a Radio Shack tape recorder. At age 17, he taught himself how to play the piano and eventually taught himself the guitar.
When asked about the meaning of the album title, Marsol shrugs, "There's no meaning until you create one."
Butterflies, Lipstick and Handgrenades is set to drop March 30th, via Hiero Imperium and Clear Label.
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