Marble Arch

Marble Arch crafts a distinctive blend of shoegaze’s dreamy textures, the shadowy electro-pop associated with many Captured Tracks acts, and a pronounced strain of French melancholy, all under the artistic direction of Yann Le Razavet. After beginning as a solitary bedroom project that produced the introspective 2014 album The Bloom of Division, Le Razavet shifted toward a polished studio aesthetic for the 2019 release Children of the Slump.

He launched Marble Arch during his tenure in the shoegaze outfit Maria False. Residing in a modest French town with limited options for creative engagement, he sought an outlet for the material he was steadily composing and tracking. The project’s debut arrived as the lo-fi echidna ep in November 2013. That recording attracted the attention of Requiem for a Twister, which issued the full-length The Bloom of Division the following year in conjunction with Le Turc Mecanique. Le Razavet tracked the album at home, with mixing handled by his Maria False colleague Bernard Marie. Once a touring lineup was formed, the band performed several concerts in support of the record before Le Razavet turned to its successor.

After circulating a set of demos to multiple labels, his manager Nicolas Jublot elected, with assistance from Rémi Laffitte, to establish a new imprint for subsequent Marble Arch output. Rather than issuing the demos directly, Le Razavet opted to re-record several tracks, incorporating live drums from band member Danny Kendrick on one selection and a guitar solo by Thomas Tan on another. The track “The Sand” surfaced in 2016, yet the completed album Children of the Slump did not emerge until early 2019, appearing on Geographie.