We recently connected with Chris Paraggio and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Treegiver, my debut album under the name Marcyline, has definitely been the most challenging and rewarding project I’ve worked on to date. What started as a collection of anxious and cooped-up sound experiments during the 2020 lockdown really allowed me to find and reinvent myself as an artist.

In trying to build this unique and immersive musical word, the many challenges that we’ve run into have only made it that much more meaningful to me. With its full-fledged release coming up in the next few months, I just hope it will take on a life of its own in the arms of the listeners.

Chris, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Chris Paraggio, and I make experimental rock music under the artist name Marcyline.

I love the concept of worldbuilding that I’ve always seen in my favorite TV shows, books, movies, and games. Architecting immersive worlds and environments and expressing myself through this creative process gets me most excited about making music!

This passion really came into focus when creating the debut Marcyline album Treegiver, which places the listener into a dark and wintery folklore inspired by the forests of upstate New York.

Marcyline also exists as a live band in New York City bringing this world to life in a unique way at each show.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

It’s just that I genuinely love writing, recording and performing music, and that I hope listeners can find a unique and resonant home within my work.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

For a long time, I was quite caught up in musical tradition, coming from a background of both classical performance and trained songwriting. But, while long-established patterns are important to understand, I’ve had to realize that they shouldn’t be rigid rules. Songs don’t need bridges! Vocals can sound quiet! I mean, of course, it depends on context. I think it’s all about finding balance, picking and choosing from tradition, and making sure that what you’re creating is the most true to itself (and yourself) that it can be.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://marcyline.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrcylne/

Image Credits
See image credits below, organized by file names (and/or a description if needed). Live Photo 1 and Live Photo 2 were taken by Ned Jacobs. Live Photo 3 and Live Photo 4 (the color-warped ones) were taken by Griffin Ashburn. Night Photo, Street Photo, and Wide Photo were taken by Margot Piorkowski. Rehearsal Photo was taken by myself, Chris Paraggio.