In Conversation with Murlo

Features

Marko Marincic

05 Mar 2018

Murlo blew our collective minds with his AV show at Brighton's Patterns, we caught up with him after to discuss the tour and plans going forward

In a space normally reserved for club-nights and occasional live performances, it’s a rare thing to be completely immersed in a visual, as well as sonic, experience. But here, in the relatively early hours of the night, the crowd that had flocked to Patterns were exposed to something special.

From punters to bar-staff to support artists to security, when the show started it was impossible not to get swept up and away by the spectacle unfolding before you. Everywhere you looked were wide-eyes and mouths open in awe.

And no wonder. On stage, Murlo worked his magic behind a sheet on which the producer’s hand-drawn animations were projected, moving perfectly in unison with the music. He worked through classics such as, “Into Mist” and “Tired Of U”, whilst also exhibiting new material, all the while accompanied by his own truly mesmerising visuals.

It was often goosebump inducing, a genuinely special piece of sonic and graphic art that is rare to see in today’s live music climate.

Brighton was the penultimate night of an AV tour that has taken Murlo across the country, ending on the 9th of March in Glasgow. Off the basis of its reception, this time around we’d be incredibly surprised if the AV show didn’t return at some point in the future. We caught up with Murlo after the show to talk about the tour and any future developments we can expect:

 

Your recent AV show at Patterns was genuinely one of the best things I’ve seen/heard in a very long time! How did you find it?

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Yeah it was a decent show, I thought the club's low ceiling might have been troublesome but it turned out great. I think the short throw projector helped out a lot for that.

How has the rest of tour gone? Any problems along the way?

I think anything that could go wrong has gone wrong during preparation, everything from Ableton playing tracks 200% too fast to lights short-circuiting and frying. Luckily this has all been during set up and each show has run really smooth. I think it’s important to experience these things though as its all future knowledge I can learn from. It’s definitely been educational.

Such an innovative project must have taken a long time to plan and create, how did it come about? Were you always sketching with an AV show in mind or did this idea come later?

Yeah the show is a product of many months of drawing and preparing files. I'm not sure exactly how long as I've been drawing a lot on and off over the past year so it's been a gradual process.

I was drawing and creating this world for the music to exist in for a good while before I had the idea of making it into an AV show, I think the point where I thought it was possible was shortly after I made the 'Tired Of U' video.

 

Glasgow on the 9th of March is the last stop of this current AV tour – what’s next after that? Will we be seeing another AV tour in the future?

Yes! Really looking forward to running the show in Glasgow, after that, I'm not too sure. I would love to play a few more in some different cities and maybe even think about taking it out of the UK. It's a lot to handle though. I want the show to look the best it can be and have a good consistency within each venue. Definitely more shows this year without a doubt though, it's going to be an ongoing project that I'll be adding to and evolving.

Your music is such an eclectic mix of genres all woven together with that signature Murlo sound. We’re curious, what’s your favourite thing to listen to on a normal day?

When I’m drawing I tend not to listen to as much club music, so I listen to a bit of a variety of stuff. A good example of some stuff I like to listen to is in the Cinematic Mixes I’ve done on NTS.

 

What’s next for Murlo? Anything exciting to talk to us about?

Yeah there’s a few things in the very near future that I'm just putting the final touches on, gonna leave it as a surprise but apart from that I have an Asia tour coming up in late March that I'm really excited about!