Glass Effect

Description

It's a rare talent that can connect Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke, afrofuturists Sun Ra Arkestra, and grime legend Dizzee Rascal, but Ben Marc has long blurred musical worlds and crossed boundaries. On double bass and bass guitar, he oscillates between jazz, classical music, and electronic music, whether playing on Greenwood's award-winning score for the film The Master or touring with Astatke for over 10 years, in addition to working with artists like Matthew Herbert, Charles Mingus, China Moses, and Soweto Kinch - and even joining Tina Turner on stage once. But as a producer and multi-instrumentalist at the forefront of the British jazz scene, Ben Marc is now making a name for himself with his debut solo album, 'Glass Effect'. Its title speaks to the limited perception of Black musicians as belonging to only one genre - and to overwhelming expectations. "There's a glass ceiling in most of the fields I've worked in: playing classical music; the lack of Black producers at the top of electronic music," says Marc. "There are so many different facets to being a Black musician in London. Evan Parker is a huge influence for me one minute and the next it's Common, then Mount Kimbie. Marc, the alias of Neil Charles, has quite a musical pedigree. He grew up splitting his time between Birmingham and Carriacou in the Caribbean: at school in the English city, he started taking classical music lessons at age 10, while back on the island, he took up guitar thanks to street artists playing soca at family events, with whom he eventually played small gigs, going from house to house. At home, his musical education was just as varied. "My dad would play Bob Marley and my mom would play Blondie. That and classical music, it was normal."