orange vinyl version - Black Marble hummed to life in the fall of 2012, switched on by the early aughts New York City synthwave revival. Today, fourteen years on and seven releases later, Chris Stewart continues to make records hunched over machines that warm to the touch when turned on and need to be coaxed to stay in tune. His albums, written, recorded, and delivered solely by Stewart, remain singular visions, with songs that seek to convey a diffuse pastiche, now shaped by a desire to wrap the whole thing in a message that speaks to where he’s been and where he wants to go.
His latest vision, Life in Small Spaces, sees Stewart comment on the music industry and his role within it, reflecting on how underground music has changed over time, and how a blueprint for keeping things simple and being true to oneself is the only ideal for living in this complicated landscape.
Stewart's desire to span time with his ideals intact shows up in the songwriting, which retains the project’s pop-sensibilities while adding new tricks to the bag. Life in Small Spaces trades walls of synths for more guitar, drawing on early American left of the dial college radio staccato guitar lines recalling Pylon, The Necessaries, and R Stevie Moore, and live drum samples, a nod to Wire’s simple metronomic style. Stewart explains the reason for the change as a way to “create this chime-y hypnotic quality. Like a radio dial that is between two stations.”
| A1 | It Always Comes to Me |
| A2 | Jim Carol New Year |
| A3 | Anything |
| A4 | Get Back Up |
| A5 | Other Man's Dream |
| A6 | Guess |
| B1 | Life Without |
| B2 | Missing History |
| B3 | Panopticon Calls |
| B4 | Picture When |
| B5 | Sonny Boy |
