Humanist

Humanist is a big, ambitious project, a rush of future rock’n’roll which showcases the songwriting and productions of Rob Marshall, and the featured vocal talents of Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode), Mark Lanegan (Queens of the Stone Age), alongside an impressive list of other stalwart vocalists in music - a heady brew, masterfully conducted by Rob Marshall (guitarist of Exit Calm and co-writer of Mark Langan’s celebrated “Gargoyle” and “Somebody’s Knocking” albums) who wrote, played and produced all the music.

 

“I’m fairly quiet and dreamy,” Rob muses, “my head’s away in clouds of thoughts and imagination, but I’m driven to be as real and authentic as I possibly can be musically, trying to push everything I have into those real musical moments, in order to harness all I’ve got; it was never really a choice, but the only thing I ever felt I could do - to swim with the tide, accept your fate, ride the waves.  I’m a shy person but on stage my guitar leads me to a place of innate confidence, so I guess that’s where I’m most comfortable”.

 

Rob formed his first real band in the year 2000: Lyca Sleep spun a dreamy, languorous psychedeliica, and toured extensively with South, The Warlocks and Engineers. After the singer left, Lyca Sleep morphed into Exit Calm: "This band reclaim the guitar band as something to have faith in again,” wrote Mojo, and Guitarist Magazine called them “One of the best British Guitar Bands of the last 20 years.” They released two critically acclaimed albums, played festivals including Glastonbury, V and Leeds/Reading.  Big tour supports with Echo and The Bunnymen, Doves & The Music followed. After extensive tours in Europe and Japan, they split in 2015, and Rob found himself without a band, wondering what to do next, a stranger in rough-round-the-edges, bohemian Hastings on England’s South Coast.

 

The inspiration for Humanist came after watching ‘The Living Room’, a documentary about Gavin Clarke, the singer with UNKLE who Rob had once shared a manager with. Waking the next day to find Gavin had sadly passed away, Rob was so moved by the situation, he sat down to find the music flooding through him, quickly writing a piece that sparked the idea for a soaring, ambitious project that dealt with the deepest of themes - mortality, the ways we find meaning, the liberation of the human spirit. 

 

Humanist is also a magnum opus musically, fully realised and rounded works - not only Rob’s first solo project, it was also the first music he’d ever fully produced, teaching himself production while making the records, just like he did with his signature guitar sound, forging its rich, brooding sound-world on instinct. Rob also plays and records nearly all of the instrumentation, but he has a vision of the albums going far beyond a one-man project, opening its palate and scope by making it a showcase for many of the singers he’d always admired.

 

The first to respond to Rob’s writing talent, was the late Mark Lanegan (Queens of the Stone Age), which began a deep and ongoing musical friendship that would (unknowingly at the time), conclude in a heartfelt conversation, just a few days before his passing. Mark didn’t know Rob’s work at first, but he fell in love with what he heard, and agreed to perform on several tracks of the debut; he so loved doing this, he asked Rob if he had any spare material from Humanist for his own albums. Rob didn’t, but in a flurry of inspiration over the next seven days, he wrote and produced six tunes for Mark, all of which made it onto their first collaboration together, the much celebrated album ‘Gargoyle’ (2017 Heavenly Records) which Mojo described as “A triumph”, The Guardian “A bravura statement” and went onto become Mark’s most successful record since 2004’s Bubblegum. Mark’s forthcoming album ‘Somebody’s Knocking’ featured six more co-writes from Rob, but the tracks which first inspired this musical bond are part of Humanist and ongoing. 

 

The debut album featured vocal contributions from Mark Lanegan, Mark Gardener (Ride), Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode), Joel Cadbury (UNKLE), Jim Jones (Thee Hypnotics), Carl Hancock Rux (David Holmes, Portishead) and John Robb (The Membranes) among others. In a creative experiment, Rob provided the finished music and song titles, which suggested the emotional subject matter, and the vocalists responded to these themes with their own lyrics, giving the work unusual richness and scope, and providing each individual track on the Humanist debut with distinctive elements within a unified whole, united by an overarching exploration of the concept of Humanism - in Rob’s words, an exploration of

 “Life, birth, death, religion, mortality. A philosophical stance..looking at the value of people, what we mean to each other, of thinking and evidence vs. superstition. It’s about creation vs. evolution, Heaven vs. Hell, the grave vs. eternal life, and how human beings react to those concepts. It’s an album about what’ hope’ means to us all.”

 

The second LP ‘On The Edge Of A Lost and Lonely World’ due for release on Bella Union in 2024, lifts things up a notch – a cinematic, slick production featuring an equally impressive list of vocalists, including once again, Dave Gahan and many other remarkable names – soon to be announced! The album is a visceral, tripped out, mesmerising cacophony of songs; from kraut rock, to out and out rock / post punk inspired tracks, these are songs with gnarled roots, where demonic and angelic impulses collide. Anthems and ballads sit beside each other seamlessly, set to boisterous and robust instrumentation, bringing to mind bands as diverse as Doves, Killing Joke, UNKLE, Factory Records, all providing the perfect setting for Rob’s unique and distinctive guitar sound. With divergent, gritty productions in the vein of Martin Hannett, flavours of Joy Division and Duritti Column contrast with the cinema of Sigur Ros and Elbow – whatever inspired it, wherever it came from - Humanist is here to stay. 

 

31.20.2023