Markus
Meet Markus, formerly Seatraffic’s Mark Zannad; photographed by Max Sanchez.
With Seatraffic being given a respectful and gallant viking funeral out into the great pacific yonder, Mark Zannad is proud to present the next stage and level of his creative cathartic syntheses with Markus and the launch single “Shy”. Sure there are traces of that luminous Seatraffic light show LED/neon sheen of character, but here Markus takes it to even deeper sub-sea terrains and levels. One analogy can look at the Mark & Brandon Seatraffic days as pastoral for ocean gazing hymns and odes to wonder, while the Markus solo new beginning focuses on digging the lesser disturbed terrain for electronic methods buried in chronological sedimentary stacks of earth absorbed ruins.
With the duo’s mutual dissolution of the former, Mark remains concentrated on new arrangements and patterns of synthesizer placements and heavier tonal weights.”Shy” shows Markus taking the self-made electro-designs from out of the confines of the bedroom and exploring deeper expanses of richly textured sound set-ups that convey things from more personal places, featuring more elaborate sequencing maneuvers. Read our exclusive Markus interview now.
Describe the transition from Seatraffic to going solo as Markus.
The timing couldn’t have been better. After the release of Beauty in the Night, the first and last Seatraffic LP, I started writing some new songs. At first these were intended to be Seatraffic songs, but as they took form, it became clear that they were much different than Seatraffic’s sound.
Brandon had been falling out of love with playing music for a few months after the release of the LP, he wants to settle down with his girl and move to Santa Cruz. The new sound is very influenced by electronic music and simple drum patterns. Playing these kind of patterns can be very boring for a drummer, especially one as technical as Brandon. We mutually agreed that Seatraffic was at it’s end.
Tell us about your own fusing of r&b and euro-dance deluxe together to make your own new brand of sound.
This is simply a product of what I have been listening to my entire life. I became interested in music when I was about 7 years old, and being from Las Vegas, you are pretty much subjected to the music you hear on the radio and see on TV. I was obsessed with 90’s r&b, I would stay up all night watching BET’s “Midnight Love”. In middle school, when I got a good grasp on how to use the internet, the genres I had access to became endless. With a little help from my older sister, I was introduced to electronic music. I would blindly download every song on KaZaa that was labeled Techno or House, I was listening to a lot of the early stuff from the big name EDM Artists of today, before their music took a turn for the worse and EDM became top 40.
Around the time I moved to SF I fell out of love with electronic music and became mostly interested in Bands, which is where Seatraffic came out of. This new sound is the culmination of all of this listening I have done in the past 20 years. I’ve rediscovered electronic music recently and there is some amazing stuff coming out these days.
How did you go about channeling introverted feelings to make the track “Shy”?
The mood of Shy came naturally, I don’t really think about how a song should feel or sound before I start writing, I usually just mess around until I hear something I like and then run with it. The lyrics always come after the music for me, so I write lyrics to match the mood of the song. This song is about going solo, being shy, playing the music I want to play, and not giving a fuck.
What other recordings can you discuss?
I have a few other songs in the works that will come out this year. Everything takes much longer now because I work full time as a designer and project manager at an architecture office.(I can’t say I’m an architect on record yet, because I don’t have a license… yet). As of right now the plan is to just keep releasing singles.
Other local Bay Area artists you want to give a shout out to?
I have to give a shout out to Michael Palmer of The Bilinda Butchers, he was my feedback coach for this song, and it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did without him pushing me.
What has been moving you lately in terms of sounds & visions?
In terms of sound, I’m still obsessed with Jessy Lanza, very excited for her new album coming out this month on Hyperdub, her production and vocals inspire me in a lot of ways. Also pretty much everything that the label 1080p Collection from Vancouver has been putting out is fire. Very excited for the Palmbomen II and Betonkust collab they are releasing on cassette.
In terms of vision, I’ve been really inspired by SF based artist Dylan Tushar’s photography lately, he takes macro photos of ordinary objects and makes them extremely compelling. It’s worth looking him up on Instagram.
Listen for more from Markus via Soundcloud.
