Jacob Testa from Mindequalsblown.net gives his insight to the situation.

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by Andy Pollack, 12/10/2011

Pittsburgh native, Marcus Meston, has turned his basement studio into a music factory to produce a superpop project into an album. Equipped with his father’s music studio in his basement, Marcus Meston smeared the lines between pop, rock, and new wave.

When asked about his background in music and why he wanted to produce his own music Meston replied:

“Music has been around me for my whole life. My dad originally had the studio in my basement for his own projects, but as time has gone by we have come to share it pretty evenly. The resource of having a studio and the spark of interest in music around the age 13 really made me use the area to my advantage. Also, my interest to produce came about a year ago because I started listening to artists who play all their instruments, produce, mix and even promote by themselves”.

Fake, Fixed, Happy is Marcus Meston’s new experimental pop gesture, augmenting hyped-up synths with meandering choruses and late-eighties techno flair. It’s an attempt at staying true to an experiment and making pop even poppier.

“In my first EP release ‘Everything is Fine’ I started to shy away from rock and go towards more of a pop approach. Due to this success, it inspired me to make this EP a pop collection that is satire to the processed pop that is so prevalent on the radio today, thus creating a ‘Fake, Fixed, Happy’ sound”, says Meston.

This is Marcus Meston’s first self-produced EP – following his previous work with the band 13AM. Here, Meston has become primarily a one-man team, playing all the instruments, mixing, and mastering all the music.  The one exception is the song “Pocketful of Problems”, which features Billy Sukitch on guitar and vocals. Listen to song, the chorus may catch you by surprise. It’s like walking down a quiet street and everything suddenly turns into a rock concert.

The single “Easier” works in a different way, supported by solemn string loops, drums that chime in and out for emphasis, and lead vocals whose last word “time” calls out in the end.  This song is cool because anyone can relate to the message that time heals all wounds.

Marcus Meston cited the artist ‘Self‘ as an influence for Fake, Fixed, Happy, and that influence is evident in the meandering vocals, and in the digital-style of rock. See “Waiting,” whose choppy chords and relentless beat twists into a techno pulse. Other influences include Blinker the Star, Jason Falkner, Butch Walker, Ben Folds, and The American Secrets. There’s still a strange familiarity to Marcus’s approach to music, but the end result sounds new and unique.

Listen to Fake, Fixed, Happy here: http://soundcloud.com/marcus-meston/sets/fake-fixed-happ/

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