About

Hailing from the misty mountains of Asheville, NC, Marley Carroll has been making waves as a thoughtful, sophisticated electronic producer with a penchant for melancholy melodies and warm, silvery vocals. Known as “the producer’s producer,” Carroll commands respect among his peers and a steadily-growing audience of fans. A classically trained pianist and percussionist, but never content to color inside the lines, he became the youngest ever to win the title of Best Scratch DJ for his home state of North Carolina – at 17. In the years since, he has never stopped evolving, undergoing a full transformation into a veteran producer, DJ, and dynamic live performer.

His self-produced 2007 debut album Melanaster was the result of meticulous bedroom alchemy, recalling a lost Radiohead LP submerged in ten feet of saltwater.  The album’s sonic signature can be found somewhere between the beautiful haze of early ’90s shoegaze rock (My Bloody Valentine) and early 2000s IDM (Autechre, Squarepusher).  Smeared, melancholy pop songs tethered to abstract electronic rhythms, or what NPR called “gorgeously subdued glitch-pop.”

In 2011, Carroll truly came into his own as a producer and live performer. He developed a solo PA set to bring a more raw and improvisatory vision of his music to live audiences, combining vocals, turntables, hardware controllers, and analog Moog synth. His onstage performances are exercises in understated talent that mix live vocals with stunning and unorthodox turntablist skills over a bed of sophisticated electronica. In 2012, he toured with forward-thinking producers like Shigeto, Dabrye, and Emancipator, and appeared at groundbreaking music festivals across the country (Moogfest, Decibel, Coachella). The galvanic dance floor energy of larger audiences infused his drum-driven 2012 EP R&S / Cedars, and its title track garnered a favorable feature from XLR8R. Steadily, national attention was building for Carroll’s unique style of subtle and compelling dance music.

In December 2013 he released Sings, a new full-length LP that combines the best of his recent instrumental work with his considerable skills as a songwriter. A densely propulsive electronic album rooted in forest imagery, Sings received universal critical acclaim, drawing praise from tastemakers like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Bandcamp and Impose Magazine. Sings was named NC’s Best Album Of 2013 by YES! Weekly.

“Marley Carroll is connoisseur of groove, a tastemaker with a diverse palette and great attention to detail. Gifted in the dark arts of composition, production and turntablism, Marley Carroll is a veteran in the making.” – Emancipator

Marley Carroll is currently unsigned. He releases music via Melanaster Records, a self-run label.