fat jon - Plaything: Cipher

It’s been more than 20 years since Jon Marshall debuted under his moniker Maurice Galactica as a solo producer of an album experience. A timeless classic “Humanoid Erotica” paved the way for deep spheric instrumental hip-hop as we know it today. Coming out of Cincinnati, Ohio, Marshall better known as fat jon was a co-founding member of Five Deez. The famed underground rap crew formed a loose movement alongside acts such as Black Star and Hieroglyphics in the wake of Rawkus and Soulquarians setting a creative blueprint for an alternative and musically more diverse hip-hop sound, which heavily influences young artists until this very day. fat jon as one of the MCs, but more importantly as the producer of the crew’s eclectic sound merged the “boom bap” of hip-hop breaks with jazzy trip hop elements and dance music aesthetics. Over the years (and by now – decades), Fat Jon established himself as an undisputed innovator of atmospheric hip-hop beat making. A connoisseur of jazz and hip-hop music in all its depths Jon Marshall as fat jon as well as his numerous (both known and unknown) alter egos combines ethereal melody bits and spacey synth pads with dry drum breaks and irresistible bass lines.

All of his craft as a producer and feel for moods can be witnessed once again on his third album as Maurice Galactica, “Plaything: Cipher”, presented by Sichtexot. 15 brand new productions, on which he showcases his extraordinary skill on keys and for layering samples. “I make Maurice Galactica music with a different personality. In my opinion, Maurice’s music is more experimental.”, Marshall describes the project. “‘Plaything: Cipher’ means a lot of things, I’ll give you two examples: One, it means that Maurice himself is a plaything in the center of different influences; being used to channel vibes, sounds and ideas. Another meaning is that the album itself is a musical plaything that needs to be decoded, the listener decrypts the key with each listen. It’s a really fun play on words that gives the music on the album different meanings.”

By chance Sichtexot label head Anton Pfurtscheller, a day one fan of Five Deez, discovered (s/o Kabuki and Stephan Kunze) that Jon Marshall had relocated to the wider Frankfurt region living right next to Mainz, where the German imprint is based . The two met up, made plans and as a result the first Maurice Galactica album since 2012 sees the light of day.