Marie is an EP-ish release - it is more than a half hour of music - from Romance of Young Tigers. The release is an impressive project with handmade packaging for every physical copy (out of 500) which are made from reclaimed CD covers and packages from other groups. Again, Romance of Young Tigers produce an evocative brand of instrumental sound that is rather engaging and Marie is seemingly a single body of work split into two movements (it works well in the vinyl format but loses some of the effect on CD).
Marie begins with a soft undulating reverberation that is literally a soothing listening experience; the work slowly unfolds into a full wave of aural sound which ebbs much like a body of water giving the first movement a true organic feel to its arrangement. The higher pitched noises do not veer into the spectrum of painful to hear, but rather they are tasteful and provide excellent counterpoint to the lower pitch sounds and white noise that are present. The composition seems to follow an arching, not unlike a bell curve, construction in volume as the first movement descends into a barely audible bass rumble that, with proper equipment, may physically rumble the listeners' body and or floor to great affect.
The second movement of Marie picks up where the first leaves off with the low rumble but at the same time adding what sounds like an organ or an EBow guitar that fills out the sound rather nicely. The timbre with the second half gives a more varied listening experience with what may be deceptively more different sounds, but it works well in conjunction as a whole piece. There are sections of this movement that evoke Godspeed You! Black Emperor at times.
As this is my second meeting with Romance of Young Tigers, it is easy to compare Marie to I Have Supped Full on Horrors to each other; and I find myself enjoying the former a bit more than the full-length. Marie just seems to strike an emotional nerve and compels me to listen to it more. I would highly recommend this "EP" by Romance of Young Tigers to anyone that enjoys ambient or drone or whatever the "genre" one refers to the genre as; the group does compose a quality record.
