delivers BETWEEN NEEDLES & NIGHTFALL on May 11 via his label Royal Potato Family.
BETWEEN NEEDLES & NIGHTFALL was initially conceived at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, NY where engineer Bryce Goggin (Pavement, Akron/Family) tracked Marco Benevento and his trio, including bassist Reed Mathis and drummer Andrew Barr, over three days. The material was drawn from fragments of melodies and song ideas that Benevento had been collecting over the last year. To achieve the colors he envisioned for these compositions, Benevento recorded on a baby grand piano bolstered by guitar pick-ups, amplifiers and a myriad of pedals and circuit bent toys, while overdubbing Moog, Optigan, Mellotron and Farfisa. He then transferred the tracks to his home studio, taking the next two months to cut, loop and shape the pieces into full-fledged songs. Additional drum parts were added by Matt Chamberlain. As a last step, Benevento handed off his work to three of his favorite engineers: Mell Dettmer (Sunn O))), Eyvind Kang), Jesse Lauter (Low Anthem, Elvis Perkins) and Vid Cousins (Amon Tobin, Kid Koala) for final mixes. The results range from the day-glo electro-pop of "It Came From You" to the simply-stated lullaby "Katie’s Song" to the shimmering Arcade Fire-meets-Brad Mehldau anthem "Two Of You."
2009 was a breakout year for Marco Benevento. In February, he released Me Not Me, an album featuring interpretations of songs by My Morning Jacket, Leonard Cohen and Deerhoof among others. Touring it across the U.S., Benevento and his trio made a number of high profile performances, including San Francisco Jazz Festival, Earshot Festival and Carnegie Hall. At the end of ’09, Benevento released his first ever DVD, Live In NYC: The Sullivan Hall Residency, a two hour-plus documentary with performances and interviews from his historical five week 2008 engagement at the downtown New York City venue Sullivan Hall, featuring special guests like Brad Barr, Kaki King, Billy Martin, Stanton Moore and Steven Bernstein. As if all this wasn’t enough, he toured and recorded with post jazz cognoscenti Garage A Trois, became a full time member of indie pop experimentalists Surprise Me Mr. Davis and welcomed his second daughter into the world.
With the release of BETWEEN NEEDLES & NIGHTFALL Marco Benevento continues to define himself as one of the most prolific new voices of his era, blurring genres from song to song, and more often from measure to measure, with his own take on simple pop pleasures, dance party rave-ups and art jazz experimentation. He speaks in modern sonic tongues, all cut-and-pasted, tweaked-out and glitchy, but full of wide-eyed wonder that rejoices in the limitless horizons of sound and melody.
