Biography
Markus Wormstorm (Autechre and Miriam Makeba's love child) is a lot more than just an unfortunate surname. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and started writing electronic music at the tender age of fifteen. He attended a local art school where he studied both Drama and Music. At the age of 16 Markus had formed a small theater group, which put on annual performances at the schools theater. These "performances" where often skit based, and though poorly executed, politically fuelled and enthusiastically academic, these shows where really nothing more than a good excuse for Markus and his friends to wear more then their usual amount of eye liner, get naked and pour stage blood all themselves and the audience (teachers included). Markus wrote the music for these shows and directed them.
At the age of 18 Markus moved to Cape Town, after convincing his parents that he needed to study there. Shortly after dropping out of University he sold a song to African Dope Records for five thousand rand. He used the money to buy himself a cd writer, and so doing was able to burn a hundred copies of his first solo album "Rachel the Bear". By some small miracle one of these cds found it's way to New York city, and he was soon after contacted by Sound-ink records and offered a deal in 2001.
Things snowballed from there following the release of the Hookers ep on Sound-ink records in 2003, and the release of The Constructus Corporation ( a collaboration between Waddy Jones, Markus and Markus' new found friend Simon) by African Dope, also in 2003. At some point Markus was contacted by Daniel Levi, a young director who was making a name for himself abroad ( doing music videos for the likes of Prodigy and Massive Attack), and so Markus was offered his first opportunity to design music to picture ( this will become relevant in a moment).
After The Constructus Corporation broke up, Simon and Markus teamed up to form The Real Estate Agents. The Real Estate Agents are an instrumental tech based downtempo-electro outfit who's sound has been explained as the following : "Put-your-mamma-in-a-headlock-,-jam-on-a-magnet-type-type-o-hype-o-make-your-face-ugly-type-of-shit-!" They've enjoyed large local as well as international interest, after the release of their first self titled album in 2005, closely followed by their second album in 2006 entitled Pizzas (Live In Paris) - both on African Dope
For more see The Real Estate Agents Myspace page
At around that time Markus returned to his early day theatrics as a new collective was born, namely The Black Heart Gang. The Black Heart Gang (consisting of Markus, his cousin Jannes and childhood friend Ree) is a fantasy art collective, in which Markus was once again allowed to write, their second project (The Tale of How) which was completed in 2006 had received critical acclaim internationally such as winning the best international film at the Bradford Animation Festival Awards, and winning the Canal + Prix award at the Cleremon Ferrand film festival. Apart from that, The Tale of How was named in the top ten at the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival and is also the flagship piece for the Resfest international film festival for 2007.
They are presently working on their next project " The Tale Of Then"
Markus' newest project is a band called Sweat-X!, an electro-dance outfit with mc Spoek Mathambo …presently signed to the London based lable Citinite.
For more see their Myspace page.
Presently Markus lives in Cape Town. He owne a company, named SayThankYou, with his two friends Duncan and Simon - two professional sound studios in the heart of the city. He writes music for television and film, and is 25 years old.
Markus Wormstorm's Myspace page
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