Marpo – Backwoods Bred (CD)

The respected rapper Marpo is releasing his new album Backwoods Bred, from which he has already released three successful singles and videos. Its visuals draw us into the emotional atmosphere of the series True Detective, and the musical blend of rap, country and blues offers an exceptional experience. The lavish booklet only elevates this impression into a complete package.

Marpo is a distinctive loner of the Czech hip-hop scene as well as the mainstream. In 2018 he released his latest and at the same time most successful album so far, Dead Man Walking, with which, as TroubleGang, they sold out the O2 arena. Today the thirty-six-year-old rapper is heading down a path of rap, country and blues and is sending a new work out into the world. The album took more than a year to make and parts of it were recorded in, among other places, Louisiana and Mississippi in the US. The dark local atmosphere perfectly mirrors the mood of the whole record and of the artist. Backwoods Bred figuratively follows on from Dead Man Walking, as shown by the close collaboration, no longer just on the production side, with Marcus Tran and Clint Murphy. The album's lavish booklet also received a lot of attention; its design was handled by the proven graphic designer Ondřej "SHO" Havlíček, who turned it into a work of art. Alongside the album comes the video for the track Sinner , which premiered on YouTube on June 17.

The record was made almost remotely, because the pandemic situation did not allow a meeting with the producers Marcus Tran and Clint Murphy. Marpo revealed that Clint was supposed to fly in from England, but the Czech authorities did not allow him to enter the country, so they worked by sharing their laptop screens remotely, and the record was born, so to speak, over video calls.

"It's a mix of rap, country and blues. Marcus and I put an enormous amount of work into it, tuned every detail, but then again everybody says that in their press releases, how they sat over it for ages:) I'll be glad if people judge it for themselves," says Marpo, praising the collaboration. "Marcus is a huge producing talent, he has an incredible feel. We're connected like brothers and I think it works great for us."

The album Backwoods Bred represents more than a year of intense work. "Every track is polished down to the last detail. Every instrument, every 808 kick, every vocal, harmony etc. I have to admit that the time gap works great, because we kept coming back to some tracks and re-arranging them, because after three months we felt it a bit differently," the rapper describes the creative process.

Marpo is known as a lover of Florida and warm weather. He was enchanted by the landscape of Louisiana and Mississippi, where they also managed to shoot impressive videos and take excellent visuals for the record. "We filmed in the same places where Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey filmed," says Marpo, and plans to bring the dark atmosphere of the American locations to fans on stage as well.

Musically, Ota Petřina aka Marpo was influenced the most by his father, who was an excellent composer and a respected guitarist. He did not like rap, however, which makes Marpo all the more proud now of the music he has grown into. "I had a creative crisis. Because after the O2 arena we shot up among pop artists, into the mainstream, I somehow got terribly disgusted with it. Showbusiness. Then EDEN collapsed because of covid and that was it. But we made the first song, Bad Man, and I found the appetite again, that drive, that love of music. I wrote it all out of my system," Marpo describes the last few years.

Technical support & assistent studio engineering Tomáš Raclavský

Produced by: Marcus Tran & Clint Murphy

Recorded by Clint Murphy - Babylon Studios Teplice

Mixed by: Clint Murphy Roundmead Studios U.K.

Mastered by: Ryan Smith Sterling Sound N.Y.