Marcus Alan Ward

Marcus Alan Ward is a self-taught musician, someone who spent his formative years performing in as many bands as he could handle.

Playing funk, soul, jazz, hip-hop, and more, he later delved into ultra-obscure sounds when attending college.

Try as he might, however, Marcus couldn't quite shift the love of a good pop song , and continually swings between these two poles.

Releasing material under the Freeze-Tag name, the performer then switched to his given name, Marcus Alan Ward: “It really draws distinction to the fact that I’m a one man composer and that it’s just me, it’s more honest.”

New cut 'Little Sunshine' is certainly honest. Future funk with shades of Prince or George Clinton, it's an unashamedly joyous piece of music.

Check it out now. - Clash Magazine

FADER PREMIERE

According to his SoundCloud bio, Marcus Alan Ward likes to "eat jazz and listen to candy." On his debut album, Last Night I Grew Tentacles, the Cleveland-based electronic songwriter who used to release music as Freeze-Tag creates plenty of smoothed-out, freewheeling moments that reflect a certain type of jazz fan while also toying with the syrupy sweetness of a old-fashioned hard candy. The 52-minute album is stuffed with left-of-center, low-key R&B that uses shifting pitches and experimental percussion to convey things like heartache, regret, introspection and lust. The record is out this week via Long Division; stream it below in its entirety, pre-order it right here and check out the sharp, collage-style album art embedded above. - Patrick McDermott of TheFader.com

Last Night I Grew Tentacles is Cleveland multi-instrumentalist and composer Marcus Alan Ward’s journey towards the light. Don’t get it twisted; he’s not fading off into the throes of death. Instead, he’s dialing in on the light which allows us to figure out who we are, or who we’re struggling to become in this perpetual rat race.

The record is a space odyssey of epic proportions borrowing influences of sound and science from Psychedelic Soul to Prog Rock, and Jazz. Think Prince arm wrestling Frank Ocean after gobbling a handful of shrooms at a Moody Blues pool party, while D’Angelo spins the classics. Somehow Ward manages to balance his palate with an expansive, layered approach to songwriting

His knack for arranging sound is dangerous. I stopped listening to the record ten minutes ago and the ghosts in his MPC are still haunting me. There’s a connection between Ward and the sheer scope of the universe that we may never understand, but if you listen long enough it starts to make sense.

At times, Last Night I Grew Tentacles feels perfectly selfish. Ward plays as if he’s creating his art alone in a room full of burning candles and empty seats. A distinct standoffishness draws you into his alluring world. From the cover art to the last note, Last Night I Grew Tentacles is a chillingly beautiful record that will only unfold after a few hazy spins. Follow him on Twitter @MarcusAlanWard, and get a physical copy of the record at https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/last-night-i-grew-tentacles/id903954660 - Yo Teach of mishkanyc.com

"You Do" is a sighing, twinkling slice of electro-R&B by Midwestern musician Marcus Alan Ward; there's video-game squiggles that lay underneath the song's wistful melodic foundation that are reminiscent of the homespun electronic music that briefly emerged in the mid-2000s, while the rest of the song sounds very of-the-moment. "You Do" is from the mouthfully-named new LP, Last Night I Grew Tentacles, which is set to come out later this year via Long Division. - Larry Fitzmaurice of Pitchfork.com

With his impressive debut EP Eskimo, Cleveland’s Marcus Alan Ward displayed a taste for R&B chords, indie influences, and the occasional Neptunes and Timbaland hat-tip. Often particularly pretty in its experimentation, Eskimo provided a glimpse into the prodigious talent that now serves up “You Do,” a song that feels both more polished and more ambitious than any of its predecessors, buzzing and skittering along beneath the the singer/producer’s distant, airy vocals. Stick around for the Stankonia-grade guitar solo that smolders into gear around 1:40.

A logical extension of the style Marcus Alan Ward (Formally Freeze-Tag) is developing and an intriguing sign of things to come. - Jon Tanners of pigeonsandplanes.com

Marcus Alan Ward unveils the wonderfully inventive, “Sun Away”.

Set on a bedrock of intricate electronica but interspersed with smatterings of hip-hop and jazz, “Sun Away” is a restless and endlessly playful taste of what’s to come on Ward’s debut this summer.

Ward says: ‘“Sun Away” is a window into the album Last Night I Grew Tentacles, exploring the overarching themes of love at the subatomic level and self realisation.”

Last Night I Grew Tentacles is released on 12 August via Long Division. Pre-order the album here.

Album tracklisting:

1: Last Night I Grew Tentacles (A)
2: Shy ( Tunnelling)
3: Like Gold
4: Superposition
5: You Do
6: Sun Away
7: King Carnivore
8: Last Of The Giants: Neptune
9: Light Years
10: God Does Not Play Dice With The Universe
11: No Passing ( Otto & The Atom)
12: Last Night I Grew Tentacles (B) ​​ - BY THE LINE OF BEST FIT

Marcus Alann Ward creates soul-steeped electronic music with an auteur's touch. The name Freeze-Tag seems oddly fitting — there's a tactile nature to his songs, but also a sense of a series of detail-rich moments being caught in time, one after the next until you have a track like "No Passing (Otto and the Atom)." The end result is something special — a bright but bleary-eyed slab of Sade storm, Flying Lotus astrality, and Kelela intimacy. The track pops and skitters like dance music but drifts and flows like R&B. Shockingly, the Cleveland multi-instrumentalist/producer/singer did time in screamo bands as a teen (but, hey, so did Skrillex), though "No Passing (Otto and the Atom)" seems more indicative of what to expect from his forthcoming Last Night I Grew Tentacles full-length. Hear the track below. - Chris Martins of SPIN