Marcus Buser records his songs in his garage. Sometimes he’ll get his friends to play, but mostly he works alone. Long nights with guitars and synthesizers; crooning romantic memories and existential nonsense into melodies. Only the cat Dizzy judges him and really knows takes go into each track.
His new album Where or When was written and recorded simultaneously. Pieced together between early mornings catching waves and late nights as a working musician. Documenting and interpreting great cosmic shifts within his own life in real time. Buser fills his sonic pallet with West Coast Jazz, Surf Rock, RnB and New Wave to create a fusion of tones that guide the listener through his stories and confessions.
“Hello Delores. This is what you want isn’t it, a record? Well, here it is. Something to remember me by when I am far away from you. You can play this on your phonograph, or that turntable as you call it- and I hope you’ll like it!”
The voice you hear at the beginning of my record on the song “Where or When” is the voice of my grandfather Albertus Buser. He was sending an audio love letter to his then girlfriend, Delores Tholin- who would later become my grandmother. It was the start of WWII and he was waiting to be shipped off to the South Pacific. At the Chicago Servicemen’s Center the navy had a novel new technology- a recording studio that recorded straight to cut vinyl. He used this to send an audio love letter, speaking and singing songs to her so she would have something to remember him by while he was off fighting at sea.
“And so it seems we’ve met before, and laughed before, and loved before, but who knows where or when?”
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of timelessness. The idea that love exists before and after us. That each instance of love is a reincarnation or just a new physical manifestation of a greater force that has always existed. That the love that my grandfather felt is the same love that I feel. The love exists beyond all of us and is neither created nor destroyed. Simply accessed, for however long we get. In this way each love lost is less tragic because it’s not truly lost. The love remains even if you lose contact with it. It’s always there with or without you. Simply waiting to be accessed again.
