A closer look at DUST, a multi-media show from The Melomaniacs

The highways that criss-cross the USA and its immense landscapes, ranging from seemingly boundless deserts and lakes to vast forests and towering mountain ranges, have long been sources of inspiration for musicians. Everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Talking Heads, Chuck Berry to Sheryl Crow has crooned about this big country and its sweltering blacktop where the far-off horizon offers the tantalising potential of endless adventure and possibilities. Cinema loves these open roads and wide spaces too, whether it be the tales of countercultural rebels in Easy Rider or the kickass heroines of Thelma & Louise. It’s a place that lets you escape from the mundanity of everyday life – for a short time at least.

America’s open road is also the inspiration for DUST, a spectacular new multi-media event that comes to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August. Combining live music and visuals, this performance piece comes courtesy of newly-formed The Melomaniacs, who comprise of the critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter Mike Marlin, Kim Murray on guitar and Paul Silver on keys, and evocatively charts a journey the trio took across America in 2017.

The concept for the show "emerged from a series of freewheeling Monday night jam sessions, finding motivation and wit by making things up," the band explain. These jam sessions began to bear fruit in the form of music that might work as an album, but the trio struck on a different approach. They realised the songs they'd written were more suited to a performance piece than a traditional studio recording project, and they struck upon the idea of recording on the road, creating one continuous piece of music. "We booked a journey across America," they explain, "including various stops at studios along the way. It was a return to familiar territory for us – we had toured America before and somehow it felt appropriate for the music."

This trip turned into an epic, taking Marlin, Murray and Silver from New York to Oregon. Along the way they soaked up the bustling cities of the Midwest, the sun-bleached vistas of Los Angeles and the arid Las Vegas desert. From this summer-long adventure they’ve sculpted nine songs to work as one continuous piece, bringing this huge country and its varied landscapes to vivid life. Capturing The Melomaniacs’ trek across the States and their various highways and byways is Scottish filmmaker Lee Archer and New York-based photographer Jean-Luc Fievet, who both volunteered to join the band on the journey when Marlin mentioned the project to them individually. The moving images and photographs Archer and Fievet created on the journey will be accompanied by the band's uninterrupted live soundtrack, and the combination promises to be beautifully cinematic.

Marlin, Murray and Silver have been making music with each other in private for years, but this collaboration on DUST brings them together officially as a band for the first time. As a solo artist, Marlin made four critically acclaimed solo records, with MOJO describing his style as having the “gnarly swagger of Lou Reed, Graham Parker and Mink DeVille with dabs of Wilco-esque Americana”. He brings a similar sensibility to this collaboration with Murray and Silver, writing lyrics for DUST that brim with what Marlin describes as “American noir for the existentially challenged” and with the trio providing music that’s "surround sound for the soul". It's music that calls to mind the whisky-soaked melancholy of country icon Johnny Cash, the epic soundscapes of Pink Floyd and the dark intensity of The National, creating a flavour all their own.

DUST has many formats: it is a record, a book, a series of images, a film and, a multisensory experience in itself. The show makes its world premiere at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the home for this epic combination of music and film is fittingly grand: The Assembly Room’s iconic Ballroom. The resulting show promises to be a lively and eye-opening experience that should immerse Fringe audiences in the diverse cultures and landscapes of America, and serve up an evocative taste of the sights and sounds The Melomaniacs’ experienced last summer on the open road.

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DUST: 13-26 Aug, Assembly Rooms (Ballroom), 9.30pm – buy tickets here