New Blood: Dam Mantle

Every once in a while, media hype encircles a city like the birds from a Hitchcock film, sweeping down on unsuspecting artists who had, until that point, been innocently going about their business. Ever since Rustie and his tongue-in-cheek epithet ‘Aquacrunk’ went viral, such has been the fate of the Glasgow scene once again – with the world’s ears primed for the slightest sound of squelchy, jittery electronic music to emanate from the city. Tom Marshall, a.k.a. Dam Mantle, who released his debut EP Grey last month, steps into this atmosphere of journalistic scrutiny with an approach that is at odds with the current work of his peers, but shares the same sense of experimental ambition.

But rather than place Marshall’s efforts in relation to those around him, how would he himself trace the origins of his rich, glitch, globe-trotting palette of sound? "My music is a reflection of my experience," he explains. "I try to listen to as much music from other cultures as possible, and it’s changed how I think." At the heart of this approach is a meticulous engagement with samples. "It’s about getting immersed in pulling apart a small fragment of sound, and then folding it out into something else. I like how something played out of a computer can resemble a beat in a piece of music from the other side of the world, from fifty years ago."

Marshall places emphasis on the influence of computers as a tool to make music with as a personal experience rather than a collective idea. "I think the use of 8bit sounds is a reaction to our current point in time,” he says. “I like the idea that computers die, and there’ll be fossils of microchips in however many hundreds of years. For me, the use of that sound plays on that notion. Maybe it romanticises the death of computers, for hijacking a generation’s childhood."

Despite displaying devilish rhythmical intricacies (see the juddering harp-hop of Rebong for more on that), there’s also a lo-fi feel to the Dam Mantle project. Is this intentional? "Perhaps it’s about humanising the electronic. I don’t think I’m traditionally lo-fi by any means, but a lot of work goes into making the music sound like it is. I think that lo-fi aesthetic and way of recording is embedded in me." Maybe Marshall’s acoustic route into music, via Canterbury post-rockers Beebah Stant, explains the ‘human’ presence. "Electronic music just gradually filtered into my life more and more, so the music that I made began to mirror that."

Grey boasts the only collaboration in Dam Mantle’s canon so far – in the form of Yoghurt – featuring the electronically warped vocals of Julie Augere. Nevertheless, Marshall’s wish list of future partnerships is unsurprisingly ambitious, straddling Canadian post-rock, minimalist composers and avant-garde hip-hop, whetting the appetite as to what may come next from this compelling new talent. "I’d like to work with Battles, Animal Collective, Bell Orchestre, Steve Reich, Zomby, Flying Lotus, and Four Tet,” he dreams. “Maybe all seven with an orchestra and Busta Rhymes whispering over the top!" It’s a mouth watering prospect, but we’ll have to wait and see.