The avant-garde Transgalactica is known for its bold creativity, and its latest release, "Marginal Music," helps maintain that reputation. "Marginal Music" is a great piece of music, but it is also a political commentary on the realities of today's musicians.
"Marginal Music" is about the contradiction of today's listening culture. There's more music available than ever (most accessible and even free to stream), yet with its convenings, the ambitious artist is left scrambling just to realize their art. In fact, most ambitious artists are not able to make a living off of recordings and are faced with having to take side gigs like teaching, mixing for others, or playing wedding gigs. Instead of wallowing in the banal, Transgalactica turns it into art-first as a critique and then second as important as imagination.
The sound of "Marginal Music" is also a reflection of this contradiction. After an introduction with driving pulsing and atmospheric elements about space, the song shifts into the apocalyptic middle part. In this section, Transgalactica parodies with a "pseudo-scientific theory" when it suggests that anyone who has spent their life listening to bad and/or throwaway music, this person would end up listening to it for eternity. The threat may have a performative edge, but the underlying message is blunt. It’s a warning regarding taste, culture, and mediocrity.
The tempo and groove of the song suggest all the intensity of progressive rock with some experimental textures that bring to mind the vastness of space travel colliding with our collective frustrations as sentient beings on planet Earth. The jarring juxtaposition of soaring soundscapes with gritty lyrical commentary creates a simultaneous narrative that is as engaging as it is thought-provoking.
Through “Marginal Music,” Transgalactica demonstrates that they are not interested in playing it safe in the artistic arena. They are interested in causing audiences to think, make sense of it, and hopefully disrupt and question the status quo. They are interested in showing the world that music can conquer big ideas in any way imaginable. If one is looking for something deeper than mere aesthetic entertainment, “Marginal Music” is a tonic as critical as it is cosmological, looking forward to an art and artistic practice that cannot be relegated to background noise.