The broad palette of sounds traverses electronica, lo fi folk, alt pop, acid, and techno. To be able to offer up this many styles in a cohesive story is no easy task. Listeners may think they are in for a lo-fi alt pop experience as “Blue Car At The Beach” and “Organ and Nylon” bring a melancholic, nostalgia soaked re-run of memories projected through a paisley patterned, sun coloured, glass prism. There is beauty and sadness in the warmth of these songs, and a tenderness and vulnerability that contemporaries such as Black Moth Super Rainbow and Warp Records artist Bibio would be proud of. But you are soon thrown an LSD slicked curveball with Baby Bear, a braindance number opening with Hardcore breakbeats and dropping into 4/4 drums overshot with shimmery synth stabs a la Luke Vibert circa 96. This a signpost in a journey that descends into a bubbling, bouncing vortex of IDM that references Rephlex Records and early Warp Records inflected sounds; the latter of which the artist states as a considerable influence. In fact Bibio offered the ultimate show of respect to Lüske’s work, by remixing his 2007 song ”Smell” which is found on Lüske’s Soundcloud page.

A fully realised album in every sense; from song writing, lyricism, instrumentation, sampling of found sounds, vocalisation and production. Five Fires displays a level of introspection and considered story telling that you would expect from a third or fourth album, let alone a debut. This does justice to Marly’s history as a classically trained musician, multi instrumentalist and his current position as Director of Sound Design, Engineering Mastering and Production at his own studio, Alchemix, located in the inner West of Brisbane.

Five Fires truly is Marly’s vision from its creation to its final form we now hear. Music has been this mans life’s work, from his early childhood training in classical music, to building his own music studio in the basement of his parents house as a teenager, to his repurposing and rebuilding of old analogue synthesisers and drum machines which now populate his recording studio, to becoming a fully fledged sound engineer; he never lost sight of his own creative voice and he never stopped writing songs. Five Fires is the culmination of a life’s work lost in a world of sounds, written by an artist in a unique position to completely integrate his vision into every single phase of its evolution.