Maybe the best record you’ve never heard from [2007]
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Everyone has that one album that they will never get sick of, that always hits home, and that they can always relate to in any mood or current situation. Marco Mahler's  Design In Quick Rotation can be said to be that album.  From the first 30 seconds his meek voice and guitar soak into your skin and permeate happy peaceful memories throughout your being. It's gentle, it's beautiful, and it's sincere. I would imagine this being the soundtrack to a stranger's smile, or the adventure of looking into someone's eyes and having a full conversation without words. This album is a unique illustration of how beautiful and simple music can be.
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Marco Mahler’s vocals may lean more towards a conspiratorial whisper than a shouted ‘hey-look-at-me’, but it’s his music that rises above that charismatic whisper to snag your ear. Acoustic guitar lines cut through all else, crisscrossing, blooming, like kaleidoscopic patterns in tracks like the instrumental “Hike The Lake”. And yet it’s that very voice, that calming, quiet voice delivering Mahler’s abstract lyrics, that’s the perfect foil to the penetrating acoustic guitar. Although all this isn’t in sacrifice to melody, he does wield a number of strong melodies that will lodge like an arrow in your heart. “Orange Chinese Car” softly thumps like a basketball about to be taken hard to the hoop, while “Study Airports” is an anti-lullaby, a song to wake up to rather than deliver the lulling. Design in Quick Rotation is a surprisingly well-crafted debut from a man who, not surprisingly, is also a sculptor.
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Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Marco Mahler has spent several years working on his unique sound by travelling and listening to as much music as possible. Looking, listening and filtering everything through his fingers, he eventually took the contents of his head and turned it into eleven diverse, smart and lovely songs.

Mahler’s deep knowledge of a huge range of musical styles and his innate ability to fit pieces of them together so that, even in the most unlikely combinations they sound brilliant, makes Design In Quick Rotation an endlessly enjoyable listen. Folk and anti-folk dance together to smooth hip hop, while a rock band quietly practices next door.
So many references pop up along the way that it’s hard to pick them all out. Overall, the album has a similar feeling to The Shins, while Mahler’s distracted vocal delivery in reminiscent of both Jeffrey Lewis and Lou Reed. Bert Jansch also plays a big part and DJ Shadow appears in spirit.

The result is a bunch of chilled out songs that have clear influences but stand out on their own as something different. I would call them exciting, but that seems like the wrong word for songs that make me want to lie down on the floor with my eyes closed. They have a strange calming effect, massaging blissful pleasure straight into your ears.
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