Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
We find out all we can about the folk duo as they release three brand new tracks on Friday 4th February.
Who are you and where are you from?
We are Mags Ellis from South Shields, now based in Hebburn and Marc Oliver from Seaham and now living in South-West London
What is it you do?
We both sing together. Marc writes the songs and Mags writes and arranges harmonies. We make music remotely from our homes and release it online.
How long have you been doing it?
We met whilst studying a foundation degree course in Newcastle in 2006. We started singing and writing together a few years later and formed our band Dot to Dots. We released two EPs and played a lot around the North East up until 2011. This is the first time that we’ve made music together since that time.
What inspires you?
Making music and its endless possibilities can always be quite addictive and that certainly spurred us on to create new ideas. We have always felt inspired when singing together and in an odd way, working remotely has allowed us to rekindle this collaboration in a way we didn’t think was possible due to living so far away from one another.
We also got to grips with home recording and video editing which allowed us to share and document ideas quickly and have creative autonomy over our work.
Tell us about your music.
The three songs we are releasing all take pointers from British folk, Americana and acoustic singer-songwriter genres. The sound we create is centred around melodic vocal harmonies and the lead track from our release The Matter of the Morning includes a full band arrangement which is something that we have not explored for a long time. The track was mixed by the brilliant Chris McManus at Blank Studios who also plays drums on the track alongside the talents of Michael Whent on bass and Michael Blackwell on electric guitar.
The other two tracks Lovers Song and Flowers are a lot more stripped back in terms of arrangement and feature Marc and Mags playing and singing everything on the songs.
What have you got coming up in the future?
The Matter of the Morning will be released on Bandcamp, Spotify & Apple Music on 4th February alongside two other tracks Lovers Song and Flowers. A video for each song will be released in the following weeks on our Youtube channel. We would love to do a live show at some point but for the time being we plan to continue to write and record from our homes.
Where can people find out more about you?
Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
