Marmaduke Duke: November Dates + new Album

Out from the shadows steps the Duke, like an apparition...Bring masks. Wear cloaks. Dance like virgin slayers round the fire of medocrity...the Duke steps finally out from the shadows. Now aided by members of popular Scottish rock combos Sucioperro and Biffy Clyro, The Dragon and The Atmosphere are taking the Marmaduke Duke on tour in November 2005 as a five-piece band. Bear witness to this strange and brilliant entity. Part II: ‘Duke Pandemonium’ is near completion and promises to be a completely different kettle of pine nuts to its predecessor. They will be playing songs from 'The Magnificent Duke' and the forthcoming second album in their trilogy, 'Duke Pandemonium', out in 2006 on Captains Of Industry.

Tour dates:

11th November - Dundee - Reading Rooms
12th November - London - Water Rats (+18s)
20th November - Manchester - Roadhouse
21st November - Glasgow - Stereo (+18s)

Tickets from all the usual outlets.

Bring love and spread it all around.

This will be double spesh.

And you thought it would never happen....tsk, heathens.

www.marmadukeduke.com

www.captainsof.com

Praise for 'The Magnificient Duke' (Captains Of Industry)

BIG CHEESE

"For every concept record such as the pig blubber-ish ‘Sgt Pepper’, there’s a glowing ‘Deloused In The Comatorium’, so stick around because you have nothing to fear, and besides, the debut album from Marmaduke Duke is weirdly illuminating. The schizophrenic world of ‘The Magnificient Duke’ is, minus the day-glo De La Soul magic, centred darkly around the unspoken number that lies between two and four. Based upon a trilogy of books written by his parents, young Jorge Stibero/The Atmosphere, who despite having no musical experience, has taken (along with fellow bandmate The Dragon) their life work and created part one in a series of releases. Each song on The ‘Magnificinet Duke’ is part of a trilogy of stories, with each trilogy based around a cycle of six fuller stories with each song recorded sequentially to a style of music such as 2, 5, 8 and so on. Not only are you getting tracks that wouldn’t go amiss on a Touch & Go records ‘best of…’ compilation with the likes of ‘A fox and a fake’ but there’s also velvet-warm acoustic lullabies like ‘The Beaver And The Rabbit’. Deeper down, with ‘The Human And The Jigsaw’ we can finally hear what a Lalo Schifrin horror soundtrack would be like. Jessop & Stibero are keeping enigmatically tight-lipped about their next release, preferring instead, like JT Leroy, to remain in the darkness while letting their work do the hollering for them. The Magnificient Duke is an open book, and you’ve just been invited in." 5/5

DROWNED IN SOUND

"If this concept album seems shrouded in fantasy from the off, it's because that is the intention of the powers that be. Fuelled in abstract fashion by dichotomy after crazy mad dance beat, this album flows and correlates like a magical and mysterious tumult. Robots cannot make music like this, for it requires a certain amount of deviance and aptitude to merely think about producing such a crazy, crazy thing...."

ROCK SOUND

"Wave upon wave of fragmented sonic doodles and short bursts of volume with the impact softended by the considered strumming of softer tracks...Marmaduke Duke cover the entire musical spectrum with aplomb."7/10

KERRANG!

"…smears the lines dividing many genres: unpredictable post-hardcore, delicately layered acoustic workouts and thumping bass tracks that will reacquaint you with your downstairs neighbour."

Marmaduke Duke - the biography....

All stories begin with a 'Once upon a time... 'and this one is no exception. Once upon a time Jorge Stibero moved to Glasgow from Portugal. A wise head on young shoulders he had no previous musical experience, but did have a masterplan to record a trilogy of albums based around a series of novels written by his parents:

The Magnificent Duke, Duke Pandemonium and The Death Of The Duke.

A musical triptych?

You could say that. Jorge's parents were both professors of parapsychology and based the trilogy's main character of The Duke on a number of people they had encountered over the years in their medical studies. The three novellas concern The Duke's slow descent into a madness, a deterioration that takes him beyond the realms of everyday concepts and thought processes and into the world of the untapped sub-conscious.

'The Magnificent Duke' charts this initial slip from reality into sur-reality and the discovery of three previously unknown sides of his personality to contend with. Like a text book schizophrenic, names were applied to these conflicting personalities. Each personality exists within its own self-contained world and has its own soundtrack. For the purposes of rock 'n' roll simplification these can be identified as three separate entities: 'When the world explodes', 'When the world implodes', and 'When the world corrodes...'

The Duke is born!

Brian Jessop was a musical prodigy but could never find anyone with the will or guts to make the kind of albums he wanted to - or, indeed, a label willing to release them - and had subsequently joined and left a number of bands along the way; a perfect foil for Jorge then. The pair met at a party on New Year's Eve 2000 and found a shared ambition to make music that goes beyond the tired old structures of rock 'n' roll.

Verse-chorus-verse....big album opener...boring fillers buried in the middle....no thanks..

In winter 2003 Jorge set about translating this lofty physiological concept to music with Brian on an eight- track studio, in a cow shed, on a Scottish farm. Additional musical input came from local musicians Mary Whistler and David Davidson.

Twisted minds for twisted times....

The plan was to make music that pisses on the traditional forms. Fittingly 'The Magnificent Duke' takes the idea of concept albums and stretches it into strange and wonderful new dimensions without ever being hippy-druggy- mystical indulgence; in fact its pared-down approach and galvanised punk energy is the very antithesis of the indulgence, out-of-touch Arthurian-obsessed progressive rockers of the 70's.

Already described by Kerrang! as "a riddle dunked in glitter, a teaser absorbed in trauma", the ambition behind this on-going project is truly staggering, a journey through the twisted minds of a few individuals who have been able to translate ideas written down in an another country some years earlier with only the aid of a few guitars.

Of course as with all concept albums - from The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's... to Pink Floyd's The Wall to The Mars Volta's Deloused In The Comatorium - the true explanation lies within the music, the concept perhaps only truly understood by its creators.

Hyperbole or just hyper?

But that's OK. Because on repeated listening one thing becomes clear. The Magnificent Duke is a staggering work from a loose collection of musicians, a genuine boundary-breaker. Stylistically, it takes in hardcore, punk, prog rock, doom, electro free-from jazz, classic singer-songwriter introspection....and so much more besides. For once the sum is greater than the parts; the cocktail far tastier than it looks on paper. This isn't hype or hyperbole; its hyper music - and that's a bare fact, yo.

We won't be so crass as to use the words 'genius' or 'classic' - they're long since redundant terms in the modern pop lexicon, over-used and worthless. Nor shall we use such regimented ideas of 'band' and 'album'.

This, quite simply, is music.

Only in twenty years time its true power become apparent.

www.captainsof.com