Delicious Audio: Delicate Steve – The Master’s Touch

By Ezra Tenenbaum for Delicious Audio

The instrumental music played by Steve Marion, aka Delicate Steve, is strange and wonderful. His first full length album “Wondervisions” — released after a 10 year career of recording, producing and playing with other bands — features sonic delights only a “wise” musician/producer could conjure up.

Delicate Steve aka Steve Marion

On the song “Butterfly,” a rapid beatbox percussion sets the table for his dobro-like slide guitar styling, which are then filled out with emotive chord progressions. Gentle interludes on traditional sounding guitars (reminiscent of, say, Jimmy Page’s quieter moments) bridge it all to a joyous conclusion full of synthetic strings and percussions.

“Attitude/Gratitude” blends flowing arpeggio keyboard lines with additional rich acoustic guitar. “The Ballad of Speck and Pebble” incorporates a funky horse-hop-like bass guitar and shaker percussion to bright guitar phrasing. Open guitar chords are strummed with synth pads extending each note, creating warm emotional textures.

It’s clearly well crafted studio work, yet the primary guitar playing (especially the single note licks and riffing on top) sound loose and jammy. The perfect blend.

Where was Wondervisions recorded and what was the process like?

Wondervisions was recorded in my room at my parent’s house in Fredon NJ. Getting the music out of me and captured onto the computer was a pretty smooth process compared to all of the other times I tried to record my own music. I was in a very pure state of mind back then, and didn’t have much to think about. Every day was spent either riding my bike, recording, or doing both I had the freedom to focus totally on the album.

How did you learn to record?

Basically trial and error, and just by doing it for so long. I’ve been recording bands I’ve been in and other people’s music for years. I also have some great friends that went to school for recording, and I’ve been able to bring mixes to them, which helps me gain perspective on how I am hearing the track.

There seems a lot of attention to distinct guitar sounds on your recordings.

Click to read the full Delicate Steve interview at Delicious Audio!

– Ezra Tenenbaum

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