Back in November of last year, D’Artagnan released an EP entitled A-side. It’s a varied and charming assortment of five songs; at the core, a harmony-fuelled exercise in modern-day acoustic folk but an EP that’s not afraid to stray out into other more diverse directions; I cite the Beatlesesque, Abbey Road introduction of ‘Jetpack’ that then mixes the influence up with bits of the Electric Light Orchestra.
So, what do we know about D’Artagnan? They are a duo, Wade Allain-Marcus and Christopher Larkin. They formed when working on a theatrical production in New York back in 2011 and played their first gig that year. They relocated to LA and have continued to potter around the margins of the world of music. D’Artagnan could hardly be accused of being prolific in terms of output.
To say that ‘A-Side’ was released to a flurry of activity would be somewhat overstating the reality of the position. It’s certainly true that tweets from the camp rose for a period. Facebook posts re-surfaced after a gap of hearing from ‘D’Artagnan’ for two years. But, even with that slightest of peaks, this is still a band with fewer than fifty Facebook followers. And, in 2015, activity seems to have slumped again; no tweets since January and no FB updates since December. It’s all a bit mysterious.
Does this matter much? Perhaps not. It certainly doesn’t if you’re a fan of Alexandre Dumas and his three musketeers. You probably wouldn’t want any internet search you were to carry out cluttered with music from Los Angeles, by way of Brooklyn.
I’ve exchanged a couple of E-mails with Stephen Bray, the chap who runs the Masterphonic label on which ‘A-Side’ is released. They’ve been brief exchanges but, having done my homework now, I feel a little starstruck; for Stephen co-wrote many of Madonna’s early hits back in the 1980’s. I am mailing a man involved in such classic tunes as ‘Into The Groove’, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ and ‘True Blue’ asking for links and information about a band that few will know about. There’s something incredibly charming and very ‘not 2015’ about that.
I’d urge you to take a listen to D’Artagnan. Let’s see if we can get their Facebook ‘likes’ into triple figures?
sonicbreakfast 