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carlos severe marcelin band bio

more snippets of text than completed essay, but still good stuff!
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carlos marcelin would simply go crazy if he wasn't able to communicate through music in much the same way people chat about the mundane.  as a connoisseur of all music styles through the ages, his fingers channel cultures and millennia through his guitar to you.

was that moroccan? or greek?  i’m sure i heard some flamenco in there somewhere…

just when you’re settling into a comfortable bed of musical fabric woven from lush aural textures, he’ll sneak in some industrial-sounding percussion or a surprise ending to throw you off balance. carlos is like that sometimes.  using occasional dissonance and dramatic harmonies alternating with the playful, carlos makes a conscious effort to leave an impression on the listener.

carlos once wrote a clarinet concerto one could probably practice for a lifetime and not be able to master.  to this day, he’s still only heard it electronically.   

carlos writes a lot of songs.  so many that one musical incarnation cannot contain them all.  this is where all the songs that want to be instrumental seem to turn up.  carlos has a wonderful partner in life and song named sally tomato.  sally magically knows which of his songs need words and sings them for him.  eric flint plays drums for both sally tomato and carlos severe marcelin.  he’s played music with carlos for a long, long time. 

they both used to be in a band called silkenseed, who had a fair amount of regional success on the west coast in the late 1990s.  the big major label break didn’t happen, but never you mind ~ carlos seems much more at home in his basement playing music straight from his imagination to yours.   

perhaps a dingy basement is significant to carlos’ musical creativity.  a certain smelly, magical place on robert street in new orleans provided the backdrop for silkenseed’s early confluence and a newer, presumably drier but still dingy one in portland, oregon is the current space for his musical musings.  what is it about this subterranean  ambience that seems to encourage carlos’ music?  good luck getting an answer…

even before silkenseed, carlos attended the music composition program at tulane university.  not much is known about this period except that high grades existed in stark juxtaposition to a conspicuous absence of foot apparel.  this may come as a surprise, but carlos has some rebellious blood.  every now and then you’ll notice him on the verge of rocking out, and then as quickly as it snuck out he reels it back in with deft fingerings indicating years and years of practice.

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