M- Paths released two albums on Exeter's Mighty Force, a label reborn after a post- 1999 hiatus. Label boss Mark Darby released the first Aphex Twin 12" and pulled together an array of talent for the second life of the label, including M- Paths and Reverb Delay. Those two outfits are two different sides of producer and DJ Marcus Farley, M- Paths an optimistic ambient/ techno, electronic side (M- Paths by name, empaths by nature is the tagline) and Reverb Delay a heavier dub techno affair, inspired by Basic Channel and the techno sounds of Detroit. Marcus has set up a Bandcamp page called M- Paths Recordings to release new tracks and experimental sounds throughout 2025, a calendar of releases.
I posted January's Shapes And Patterns at the end of last year here. February's release, Love Is On Your Side, came out yesterday, an off kilter track with a naggingly superb topline and the ghost of backing vocals drifting by. It breaks down and the female voice sings 'let your heart be your guide', before the rhythm kicks back in, synths and spring noises joined by strings. Reverb Delay's February release, Super Being is Reverb Delay in Dub, an excursion in echo and space that sounds like it comes from offworld.
We started communicating via messenger and email, mainly musical tip offs and recommends and also our mutual despair at the current state of Manchester United Football Club, but also realised we'd both grown up in/ around Manchester, shopped in the same record shops and probably attended the same gigs and nights. Between us the idea for an interview came up and following a bit of back and forth and a lengthy email trail, this is the result...
Adam: What's your background?
Marcus: I really do believe that our environment moulds the music we like and the music we make. I was born in Wandsworth in 1970. As a baby my parents moved to the Peak District, near Macclesfield. Our nearest city was Manchester and I spent my youth in Affleck’s Palace, Piccadilly Records and Eastern Bloc and was a regular at the indie nights at the Ritz and 42nd Street.
There was something about the North, particularly Macclesfield, Manchester and Salford in the 1980s. These were not the thriving towns and cities we see now, they were gloomy and gritty and had an edge. I agree with Tony Wilson when he famously said of my favourite band, that Joy Division is the sound of Manchester. It is also the sound of Macclesfield, with Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris growing up there and attending King’s School like I did.
Adam: What's your sound? Where does it come from?
Marcus: As Victor Hugo said, 'Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.' It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I think it’s the sound of uplifting melancholia- music and lyrics that make you feel better, despite being about heartache or malaise. Love will Tear us Apart is a good example - heart wrenching lyrics, yet the music is uplifting, and no matter how bad things may have been, Ian was in a far more terrible place, and by default, that lifts you out of your own gloom. I took my daughter to see the mural of Ian on the main shopping street in Macclesfield recently. She's a fan, too. It was a really good experience, as I felt so proud of Ian, and the town I grew up in.
Which is a long way of saying that I think you can hear Joy Division's influence in M-Paths. You can also hear 4AD bands like Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, and two of my musical heroes, Talk Talk (particularly for the ambient parts of their last 3 studio Albums and Mark Hollis’ solo album), and Susumu Yokota (particularly his Sakura, Boy and Tree and Grinning Cat albums).
Adam: I'd never heard any of Susuma's music before and can now thoroughly recommend Sakura, an ambient album released a quarter of a century ago and filled with a certain kind of timeless beauty. Listen to Sakura here.
Marcus: I have a Philosophy Degree. In my early 20s I went to Birmingham to do social work training- and this is the essence of M-Paths by Name, Empaths by nature, as I have been a social worker for 26 years.
Like a lot of people, it was The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and Weatherall’s work on Screamadelica that got me interested in electronic dance music. Then the pastoral tones of Aphex Twin really drew me into that world. But when I moved to Birmingham, I discovered the newly formed House Of God techno night. Birmingham is similar in a way to Detroit, a then dying and now dead car industry with large industrial wastelands. DJs Surgeon, Regis and Female at House Of God developed what we now call Birmingham techno. Uncompromising, hard techno that has both a funky swing in a Chicago House way, and a locked groove influence from Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, with an added ingredient of industrial music. But I had a real epiphany moment sometime in 1993 at the House Of God when I first heard Basic Channel’s Phylyps Trak and the Maurizio remix of Vainqueur’s Lyot. Everything came together for me. I had to make dub techno. Something that took almost 30 years, as Reverb Delay, for me to get round to doing.
Adam: How did you start releasing your music?
Marcus: My friend Spotter suggested that I try signing for Mark Darby’s Mighty Force. Mighty Force famously released the first Aphex Twin 12" and the first music by Tom Middleton (of Global Communication) and Matthew Herbert. Mark Darby has become a good friend. He worked for Rough Trade also, working with labels such as 4AD, so we have a shared history musically of what we have liked.
Adam: I'm always interested in how people actually go about creating music, how it happens. What's your creative process? What comes first, rhythm or melody?
Marcus: I always start with kick drum and hi hats for the Reverb Delay stuff as they're the basis for dub techno that everything fits around so I like to get a groove going first. With M-Paths I always start with pure ambient pads and chords then add the rhythm in sections.
Initially I set out to make really hard
dancefloor techno, but it's really hard to get right - it’s like punk - seems
simple enough, but that is often harder than something more grandiose to do as
there are less elements and they all need to be absolutely on point. Without
really thinking, it kind of happened by osmosis that I ended up making ambient and more home listening stuff as M-Paths, the pads and chords
just became really ambient naturally and I love breakbeats so I do a lot with
slow breakbeats. I loved dub and when I first heard Basic Channel I knew I wanted to make dub techno but didn't know how it was
done. As my skills developed I realised it was driven mostly by the
effects, done very subtly. Atmosphere can happen not by
adding stuff but by taking elements out, particularly drums, even just
removing the hi hat in sections, or removing claps and rides. I like most electronic music from house to techno to
jungle to ambient, and can listen to gabber at breakfast. I don’t think I create music due to my mood. I generally have
a few songs on the go at once for different projects. But I definitely
listen to music dependent on mood. Apart from Joy Division, Susumu
Yokota and Talk Talk- I can listen to in any mood, any time.
Marcus: I'm a big fan of Dutch techno, particularly the stuff from the Parkzicht club in Rotterdam where Speedy J was a DJ with DJ Rob and others.
Adam: back in the early/ mid 90s I was a big fan of Speedy J. My then flatmate and I used to love Beam Me Up! and the album Ginger, proper space age ambient techno from The Netherlands. It seemed so futuristic. Speedy J was on Warp too and in 1994 everything Warp released was worth listening to.
Marcus: They play Speedy J at every Feyenoord home game! United have The Stone Roses, they have Speedy J!
Adam: a question for the kit and equipment nerds. What do you use in the studio?
Marcus: I have had some great synths and drum machines, but I would say that now my go to is Roland Cloud, where I can access all the Roland drum machines and synths that I need whilst taking up zero extra space. My studio is by default in the smallest room in the house and most of the space is already taken up with records, CDs and decks. Within Roland Cloud, my go to is the Space Echo effects unit, used a lot with my Reverb Delay stuff and also in M-Paths. I have always used echo units, as well as delay and reverb. The echo units in Ableton are decent, and so is Replika by Native Instruments. The Space Echo has been used by lots of bands over the years but I wanted it as that is what Basic Channel and Vainqueur use.
Adam: what are you into at the moment? What's the last album you bought?
Marcus: The new Sandwell District album, their first music as Sandwell District in over 10 years and the first since Juan Mendez (Silent Servant) sadly died. They have put up one song for preview and it's absolutely immense. It was started by Karl O’Connor (who records also as Regis also and runs Downwards), Peter Sutton (Female), Juan Mendez and Dave Sumner (Function) and is named after Sandwell where Karl O’Connor grew up. Brilliant name, brilliant label. Other than that, I mainly buy old vinyl stuff I stupidly got rid of on vinyl years ago!
Hidden by Sandwell District, eight minutes of squelchy and thumpy 2025 acid techno.
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