Innervisions affiliate Marcus Worgull provides a soothing listening trip and talks studio productivity, life in lockdown, hanging with Barnt and his newly-founded record label, Chorus.

Marcus Worgull is a producer, DJ and artist who feels just as at home creating emotive, dance floor-ready club tracks as he does designing intricate soundscapes to drift off to. Not that we have to tell you of course.. The longstanding Innervisions member has been distorting time and space with his productions and performances over the last two decades, so chances are you already know exactly who he is and, more importantly, what he does. Seemingly effortlessly, he manages to express his musical vision, encapsulating entire moods and feelings in a single frame of expression.

Further expanding this framework, the Cologne-based musician recently ventured into green pastures with the launch of Chorus – his freshly-minted record label, providing a fitting home for unreleased jams, that he’s gathered over the years. We caught up with Marcus to hear the latest and he contributed a mix for good measure.

Pleasure having you, Marcus! How’s life been recently? In a recent interview you mentioned that you’ve been enjoying quality time with friends and family, next to staying busy in the studio.. What are your weeks looking like at the moment?

Hey – it is my pleasure to be on board. I’m still spending my time without travelling, making music, working on my label Chorus, playing tennis, playing chess with my lovely neighbour Barnt and doing long hike walks from time to time.

Furthermore, you hit another milestone moment and entered the world of label owners with a strong account opener coming from long time friend Frank Wiedemann.. Congrats! Tell us a bit more about all that, what else do you have planned for the label in the future?

I never had the plan to found a label, simply because I thought we have enough outlets and platforms to release music already. But – I had those tracks of Frank, Imperiéux, Lehar or Bryan Kessler on my hard drives, that I liked a lot and I’ve been playing them since a long time. While DJing on a night with Frank and Lehar, they both offered me their tracks „if I want to start a label“. And – so I did. Those tracks needed to be released and if no one was doing it, the music forced me to do it.

In terms of your own studio work, has the absence of dance-focused events influenced your general workflow and studio output? I know there are people that found new sources of inspiration, while others struggle to connect to their creative spirits. How has this been for you?

Yes, of course it has influenced me and also my work. It is really difficult for me to make a peak-time club track, even without a worldwide pandemic. With the lack of experiencing impressive dance floor moments regularly, week-in, week-out, I have the impression that the tracks and remixes I’m doing at the moment get more – let’s say – „musical“, because I don’t care so much about the effect they will have on a dance floor, simply because there are no dance floor moments. I even started to record singing birds on one of my hiking walks and integrated them into one of the remixes I did, because I thought it would fit so well.

With that, what are some of the latest musical avenues that you’ve been exploring? I read that you’ve been working on some 90-bpm ‘dubbish and Reggae influenced stuff’. And what else do you have in the pipeline?

I finished a couple of remixes (some of them were due since years). And – yes – Dub Music has been influencing me since I’ve been starting to buy records. At the moment, dub is the major idea when I’m in my little studio. It is the most simple formula for me to get lost in music and during the last months, beneath all the trouble, doubts and huge question marks around my head, there has been something else around, which is this precious and priceless thing called: Time! So – I finally can work on those dub tracks. They won’t be 90 bpm, more 110 to 125 bpm. I’m still fascinated by the combination of contemporary dance music and reggae and dub.

There has been a lot of talk about the sustainability of the music biz, especially when it comes to monetization of music itself. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the matter and what you think should be done to improve the situation. With the launch of Chorus, I can imagine that you’ve been exploring different ideas.. did you encounter recent innovations or services that are a leap towards the right direction in your opinion?

The fact, that I had the brilliant idea to start a label that releases club music during a worldwide pandemic, which stops all those dance floors, doesn’t give a me an objective view on how a label would work under „normal“ conditions, so I still have to wait a bit to get a proper perspective on this. But I see that a lot of new platforms are showing up, like freq, currents.fm or the growing popularity of Bandcamp. They will help to improve the situation for music producers to sell and to monetize their music. I’m quite positive that some of those ideas will break through and change the current situation for good.

You’ve recorded a beautiful mix for our listening pleasure! What can you tell us about the recording? Any particular themes or personal state of mind behind its selection, special tracks you would like to mention, etc.?

I’m happy to hear that you like the recording! I would call this mix something like „Open Window During Summer Nights-Mix“. I recorded the mix in two takes in one of those nights (it got really hot in Cologne during august and september). I first did a take that contained more jazz, folk and singer-songwriter stuff, but I decided to go more spherical during that night. For me, the most beautiful thing about music is, that you can lose yourself into it in the most unique way. Like Mr. Marley said: „One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.“ Only few things can hold up to this.

To round off.. I recently found myself drifting off to the soothing sounds of the ‘Vermont’ LP from your eponymous collab alias with Motor City Drum Ensemble on multiple occasions. To great joy that is.. Are there any plans cooking with Danilo for another project? And what else do you’ve planned for the coming months?

Yes, Danilo and me met already a couple of times during the last months and we’ve recorded a nice bunch of new Vermont tracks, which we really like already. So – next to my dance and dub tracks, there might be another Vermont album on the horizon.

Header image by Thomas Rabsch.