Archy Marshall: "The Sea Liner MK 1"

Archy Marshall juxtaposes ambience and urgency on “The Sea Liner MK 1″. It begins slowly, with just two synth notes before noise rattles in, pulsating and driving its energy forward. On “Sea Liner”, there are no real traces of what Marshall does musically as King Krule—just his avowed love of hip-hop, which took the form of his DJ JD Sports moniker and landed him on a 2014 Ratking track. But you can hear Krule in his verse, which doesn’t begin until the song is more than halfway finished. Marshall’s got formidable bars; he rhymes easily.

Lyrically, “The Sea Liner MK 1″‘s closest forebear is 2013′s caustic “A Lizard State”. In that song, as in this one, Marshall is vitriolic and sneering, but he redirects his anger back at himself. As with the music, which constantly moves while enveloping the listener in sound, Marshall’s quick, biting verse jolts the song but only briefly. “The Sea Liner MK 1″ is both intense and mellow. It’s ambient music that never quite settles down to calmness.

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