Sound Check: Introducing Marseille

By: Mia Angulo

Redwood’s Aidan Hatch (‘22) and Kylen Gray (‘22) both have a love for the arts. You can find them on campus involved in drama, choir and journalism. You can also find them on Spotify and Apple Music as well. Hatch and Gray are the members of the band, Marseille.

“ BROCKHAMPTON is named after the street that Kevin Abstract lived on,” says Hatch, which sparked the idea for their band name, Marseille. “ We’ve been best friends for 10 years, ever since 3rd grade,” reminisces Hatch. 

It is apparent that these two are bonded by more than just their love of music. “ We have a strong brother-like bond,” states Gray. That bond allows them to come together to create and also support each other in their individual pursuits. 

Seeing your hard work being paid off is always rewarding. “ It’s a really great feeling very unreal” says Gray. “ I had to go through a few different distributor companies and you just have to pay them to upload your music. That’s really about it pretty simple theres just a little bit of paper work involved.” 

Writing music seems like a daunting task. Great songs are often written from a particular moment in time or an emotion. When sitting down to write a song, Kylen and Aidan try not to look at it as if it’s a “process”. 

“ I think we try to go with more of a feeling than a process,” says Hatch. Hatch notes that they had to try to get into the right mindset when they sat down to write their first song. 

“It was early morning and we sat down and had coffee, we were just really comfortable,” notes Hatch.

Upbeat musical arrangements are a noteworthy theme in their musical influences. Hatch and Gray’s musical influences are all very different. Some of the artists they are inspired by are Mac Ayres, Ed Sherran, Stevie Wonder, and Tyler the Creator.

“ But for actually sitting down and making music I would say Dominic Fike. He’s got to be one of our biggest influences!” 

“ Dominic, we worship him,” laughs Gray. 

Marseille has found their own style that pays a compliment to the musicians that they are inspired by. The smooth vocals on, The Way I See It and the way the guitar changes at 2:27 on the track and at 3:22 when the tempo changes to round out the ending of the song shows that attention is paid to every last detail.

It’s common for artists to use personal moments as inspiration for the lyrics in their songs but Hatch and Gray’s goal is to have their songs be universal as much as possible. “ We try to be concise about our concept,” says Gray. 

Both artists try not to overthink their lyrics and go off of a similar feeling. “If it sounds right, it sounds right, and we could always relate to it later on,” says Gray.

Tags: aidanhatch, band, clubs & lifestyles, Kylen Gray-Jacobson, redwood gigantea, redwood high school