Bildungsroman For the Postmodern Paranoid: Del Marquis and Embryoroom’s Litter to Society

It’s been quite some time since the last Scissor Sisters album, and admittedly, they weren’t top of my mind for the past year or so. I was also completely unaware that their high-trousered lead guitarist, Del Marquis, was involved in several solo outings, including his latest collaboration with Embryoroom, a multimedia group headed by writer/director/producer Edward Quist and Michael Wargula. This album, called Litter to Society, will release digitally on May 26 via delmarquis.com and comes on the heels of two recent projects in the same series entitled Hot House and Character Assassination, respectively. Interspersed with regular instrumental interludes and featuring “shadow” tracks, which are meant to represent an ulterior personality of the work, Litter to Society is a continuation of a larger narrative; this work, along with the preceding other two, come alongside a video element, which follows Marquis as the character, Viz, “who has been abducted by a mysterious force and taken into a world where he is seemingly ‘dissected’ emotionally and psychologically, therefore forced to confront his fears.” Marquis describes the theme for Litter to Society as “an account of depravity in modern life, told through songs about urban and social decay. Within each moment, there is hope, the ‘child inside’ and the possibility of redemption.” Treading a Blake-like dichotomy of innocence and experience, Marquis and Embryoroom take this romantic notion and give it a sci-fi, existential gloss.

In some ways this record is bright and shiny with the biggest, 80s-style production, flouncing about in bolshy excesses; then at other times, it is highly subdued and the brashness is tempered either into a subconscious humming or a glistening renewal. The record opens with the title track, which begins with a chorus of soulful female vocals. Rather than mere icy electro, this song is raw with funk and scratchy grooves, and its refrain of “child inside” acts like a dream-like wake-up call to the id, inciting debauched freedom rather than reflecting the innocence of childhood. Marquis’s vocals leap from seductive, low tones to higher, soul-inflected cadences (reminding me a bit of George Michael in places), revealing the struggle between gritty experience and wispy purity; however, this dialogue ends while the last minute features pared back instrumentation and old-style crooning. There is then a rather brief instrumental interlude called Backroom, which sounds like the rough hum of laser bars on an electronic cage, pulsing to a tribal rhythm and surreptitious approach. The suspense lifts to display the first “shadow” of the piece: Litter to Society Shadow, a darker re-imagining of the first track. This time, the track features liberal use of vocoder and the brass section is replaced by angular shades of synths and drum machines. There is a more mechanistic, industrial feel that recalls Depeche Mode, and rather than explosions of sonic colour, the new version, filled with distortion, moves like a re-animated automaton sparking with a network of cold, blue lightning. Freewheeling hedonism seems to be replaced with a pervasive economy of movement and rigid, clinical enjoyment.

Another instrumental interlude appears as AKL Shadow brings the high-gloss synth-funk back with bass and brass. Instead of the tension of Backroom, this track feels lighter and freer, and it reaches its climax in the following song, Any Kind of Love, a strutting, preening piece backed by a full, soulful chorus of female backing vocals. As horns wail and synths squeal, it feels like the room is awash in a mardi gras of flavours and influences, and all inhibitions are drowned out by the sheer size of the sound. The other, colder side of the album reappears with Bug and its use of cleaner, stuttery beats. A vocoder surges like a misfiring circuit beneath the clicking rhythm until the last quarter takes a melodic turn, sending light haloes of sound puffing into the air like laconic smoke rings. Entitled Backroom II, the next track does, indeed, act as a sequel for Backroom with its sonic slices and whistles sounding like the whetting of some neon blade or an ensuing duel in the dark. The brief, weaker reprise of “child inside” precedes the metallic battle sounds as though the bacchanalian party is becoming a distant dream. The rapidly dissolving reverie continues to the last minute of the song as a nearly monotone voice declares, “there is only time and space and the gap between them.” The album concludes with I Believe In You, a surprisingly vulnerable ballad of acoustic guitar and piano with a tender vocal performance from Marquis. The dirty female chorus is replaced by angelic voices as the narrator appears to re-discover himself and find the latent spring of self-worth. In its wide-eyed, earnest prettiness, its contrast with the slick excesses and the mechanical conflict of the earlier songs feels like the dispelling of a swarm of black butterflies.

While I no doubt enjoy the styles of music Litter to Society explores (this kind of soulful synthpop is right up my alley), what truly grabs me about it is how it is attached to a much larger concept, which has obviously been carefully crafted and encompasses multimedia elements. Using massive production and a brilliant mixture of the earthy and glacial, Marquis takes on some fascinating existential and moral quandaries while telling a bildungsroman for the postmodern paranoid. I’m now very curious to explore the earlier installments of this series and look forward to seeing how the fourth and final installment unfolds.

Litter To Society – Del Marquis and Embryoroom

Any Kind of Love – Del Marquis and Embryoroom