God Ribbon
God Ribbon is the musical project of Brighton based Thomas J. Marchant.
Since creating the Bandcamp Randomiser earlier this year I have come across so much great music it has been a real treat. One of those artists is Thomas J Marchant and his God Ribbon project.
Musically God Ribbon reminds me of The Arctic Monkeys, The Buzzcocks, Magazine and Pixies – there’s also a post punk early 80s warehouse feel to it, that industrial Big Black sound but less abrasive.
On the album Soldiers there are some really great tracks that have a real lo-fi energy that I could really appreciate. What really jumped out though was the melodic sensibility and the sense of space that Thomas creates – the guitars fizz with that nasty lo-fi quality that gets under your fingernails. Whether that’s intentional or not, it’s said as a compliment.
Second track in, ‘Rot’ has a Trompe le Monde vibe with that early late 80s early 90s metallic sound – In my opinion should have been the album opener but what do I know. Insistent kick, spiky guitars and distorted vocals all together in a driven indie punk blast.
Track three ‘Supply and Demand’ has an eerie quality that lulls the listener in with it’s brittle reverb drenched piano and guitar squeals. Thomas pushes his voice and it’s very effective.
Take what you want from me
It’s so easy to get what you want
For the sake of my dignity
I’ll do anything to get in your grace
Fifth Track ‘Litterbugs’ is a little post punk Manchester infused pop song with it’s cool synth melody fighting against the brutal distorted guitars.
‘Hear Me Out’ – track seven has an almost nursery rhyme feel to it. A simple acoustic guitar and a vocal that works really well, the simple nature of the track feels like it could be quite the earworm.
Track 8 ‘Great Men’ opens with a smart syncopated riff dusted with a cool but brief lead. ‘Great Men’ has a good energy and is smartly arranged. One of my favourites.
‘There are no great men
Only tall tales of the dead’
Potatoe Eaters comes up next and it’s very well performed and is possibly Thomas’s best vocal performance.
Track 10 is ‘Moth Eaten’ and is probably my favourite track. Another post punk infused guitar track all underpinned by simple but effective drum machine.
The Interview
I recently reached out to Thomas to ask a few questions and get an idea of how he goes about writing and recording.
One thing that stuck out were a few similarities between Thomas and myself. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this screed and maybe give God Ribbon a spin on Bandcamp or any streaming service you use.
Mark: Let’s start with the old chestnut who are your influences musical or otherwise?
Thomas: I go through a lot of phases of being into various styles, but some two constants have been Radiohead and Pixies, whom I’ve loved since I was in school. Beyond that, I listen to most music I can find, whether it’s Beyonce or Sunn O))), because I think it almost always has value to understand the kinda things people put out
Mark: What your favourite piece of music that you have created and why?
Thomas: I’ve got this song called Ego, which I think is the best song I’ve ever written. For some reason I’ve recorded and released it three times (Ego Version 1, Version 2, Version 3) but I’ve never been able to capture it in a way that I’m happy with. I used to play it at open mic nights and it always went down well, and I think that’s the context it works best in. I’m not sure, one day I’ll get it down, I still hold it in such high regard that it’s hard to let it go even if it doesn’t really apply to where I’m at as a person anymore.
Mark: What is your creative process? How do you start a song idea?
Thomas: It varies, but typically I’ll have a vague idea for a tune and either play or hum it into my phone as soon as I can. After that, I’ll probably flesh out the structure and record myself playing it on guitar, singing in gibberish to get a sense of what the melody could be. With any luck, some lyrical ideas will surface through the gibberish and it’s from that point that I can start to build it into a full fat song. Once I have a song, I typically map it out in FL Studio using basic drums and the piano synth, before deciding to record it.
Injected in my veins
The poison in my brain
The ideas, the man-fears
The angry little kid inside
Mark: How did you start in music? Did you play any musical instruments as a kid?
I always wanted to do it, as a kid. I could only play saxophone back then so I didn’t really have a sense of chord progressions or things like that, but I used to always write little songs in my head and had no place to put them. At some point at school, a kid showed me a track he’d made using the FL Studio demo and uploaded it to the internet. That’s when I first realised this was a thing you could do, and I made hundreds and published hundreds of mostly terrible instrumental tracks before eventually investing in some cheap means of actually recording.
You had no right
You had no right
You had no right
to condemn my work
I gotta try
I gotta try
My day is bright but I know that it hurts
Mark: Were you taught formally or are you self taught?
As I mentioned, I had sax lessons as a kid but that didn’t teach me many of the fundamentals of music. I did a music technology A-level at school, so I did get some fundamentals from there, but mostly I learned from engaging in DIY communities online. Back in the day, the SoundClick message board was very good for that, but I also found that while I was still using TikTok, there were a lot of great tips (as well as fundamentals that somehow passed me by) that I picked up there. So it feels weird to say self-taught, more like community-taught
Mark: Which DAW or Equipment do you use -it sounds like a relatively simple setup?
In terms of software, I use FLStudio for all sequencing, which these days is usually just drums, and then I record everything else in Reaper. As for the equipment I use, most of it is still cheap stuff I bought 15-20 years ago, including a vocal mic that I bought entirely because it looked cool. I’ve also got a Behringer Xenyx X1204 mixer that my old job gave me when they didn’t need it anymore
Mark: Funnily enough I started with Fruity Loops in 2003 but used Audition and had to render the midi tracks as wav files and import them into Audition to record guitars and vocals. It was a pain in the arse.
And these days I do some things
where before I didn’t
And I hope that I’m not a drag
Mark: What would you say is the best piece of advice you have received over the years.
“Crap going in means crap coming out”. I’m quite a lazy person and so when it comes to recording, it’s incredibly tempting to try and clean up and fix a bad take. It’s ultimately not worth it! I’ve only recently really internalised the benefit of recording multiple takes and not accepting a poor recording. I suppose it’s technical advice rather than artistic advice, but I think it speaks to a larger thing of making sure you take pride in your work.
Mark: If you were pushed what would be the best advice you could give to someone starting out as a musician/songwriter.
It feels cliché to say to make music for you before anyone else, so I’ll take it one step further. Make music that you believe only you will love. If you go in with the expectation that what you make will be everyone else’s least favourite thing that you’ve made, then it makes it easier to consider how much you truly love it, and make you a bit bolder in your creative decisions because you’re not worrying about the masses so much. I find now that I’m pretty old and have largely given up on the idea of being anything more than a hobbyist, it’s more important than ever that I love the music I make.
Thanks to Thomas for participating in this article and taking the time to answer my questions. If you enjoyed this then please find God Ribbon and give it good coat of listening to.
It’s available on the links below and Thomas can be found here Thomas Marchant on Bluesky
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