Pigeon Spins Featuring an Interview with Mars_999

Mars_999 - Cierny Dazd

Slovak artist MARS_999 crafts intimate, cinematic soundscapes that live between dream and distortion. His latest single “Black Rain” is a raw confession built around a lo-fi electric guitar riff, analog synths, and fragmented industrial noise. There’s no steady beat — only the pulse of emotion and breath.

Recorded in Faust Studio Prague, produced by Rohin Brown (Australia), and mastered by Sarah Register (New York), Black Rain embodies the duality of tenderness and chaos. It feels like standing in the middle of a storm and hearing your own heartbeat for the first time.

The accompanying video — filmed and edited by MARS_999 himself — is a collage of intimate, real-life moments captured on his phone. It’s a visual diary rather than a music video: quiet, personal, fragile. A glimpse into fleeting instants of love, death, passion, and eternity.

Building on the artistic lineage of Bon Iver, 070 Shake, James Blake, and Björk, MARS_999 explores the space between analog imperfection and emotional truth — where sound becomes memory, and silence feels sacred.

MARS_999 is a Slovak artist crafting cinematic, emotional soundscapes that blur the line between dream and reality. His music fuses lo-fi guitar, analog synths, and raw electronic textures with intimate, poetic vocals. Each song feels like a memory in motion — fragile, human, and deeply visual.

Based between Bratislava and Prague, he collaborates with artists across continents, including Australian producer Rohin Brown and New York mastering engineer Sarah Register. His releases often come paired with self-directed videos that merge personal moments, surreal imagery, and subtle storytelling — forming a cohesive universe of sound and vision.

...

• AGREE
• DISAGREE

Interview with Mars_999

(º)> EUPHONIA is your debut as MARS_999 — when did you realize this album had to exist?

It happened right around the time I was trying to revive my old band, Čisté Tvary. I put a lot of energy into bringing it back to life, but nothing really moved. Somewhere in that frustration, the idea of going solo just appeared. In a way, it was the only decision that made sense — the only way to keep my creative energy in motion and continue the journey.

(º)> You’re releasing EUPHONIA only on vinyl — no streaming, no digital release. That’s a bold choice in 2025. What pushed you to make that decision?

That decision came after a long period of thinking about where the world is right now, and what music — and my role as an artist — even means in it. Music is becoming more and more auto-generated. Soon you won’t need a human musician to create a song or a sound. That’s already true in the digital world — in data, in algorithms. It feels like the world we’ve built as humans is starting to slowly push us out of the frame. The era of human egocentrism is ending — and maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Evolution. So for me, it felt completely natural to step away from that space and return to something tangible — to the physical world, to vinyl, to analog.

(º)> Do you see the vinyl-only format as a form of resistance, a statement, or just a return to something more tangible?

It’s definitely a statement — but not in a rebellious way. More like a clear assessment of where things stand. I also strongly disagree with the business models and philosophies behind major streaming platforms — Spotify included — and I simply don’t want to support them by giving them my full catalog. Some songs will live digitally through my videos on YouTube, but the complete EUPHONIA album will never appear on any streaming service. And maybe it’s also a small educational gesture — a reminder for listeners that directly supporting artists, buying the record itself, not through a third-party platform, is now more essential than ever.

(º)> You’ve described this record as deeply personal — almost like a “sonic diary.” How much of you is really in it?

At this point, I’ve reached a place where I can take any feeling I believe is worth capturing and turn it into a song pretty quickly — lyrics, recording, everything. That’s something I’ve always wanted.

So yes, today I can honestly say my music really is a personal diary — the soundtrack to my own life, in real time. That also goes for the track “Black Rain,” which is my latest release. I made the video myself — using short clips, moments, and photos from my phone.

It’s a deeply personal and intimate piece, especially this one.

(º)> What role did silence play in the making of EUPHONIA? You often talk about sound as something that lives between noise and breath.

Silence is always the beginning. Without it, there’s nothing — not even the universe. So if we’re talking about music, it simply couldn’t exist without silence. It’s like night without darkness, or the sea without water.

(•)> That's all Folks! Check out Mars_999 on the Pigeon Spins Playlist