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''The Marble Index'' is the second solo studio album by German musician Nico, released in November 1968. Produced by Frazier Mohawk, it was released on Elektra Records. Described by critic Simon Reynolds as "one of the most harrowing and death-fixated albums in rock history", ''The Marble Index'' was written by Nico and features musical arrangements by John Cale, who had worked with Nico during her collaboration with the Velvet Underground. Though a commercial failure upon release, the record has since received acclaim from music critics. ''The Marble Index'' set the musical model for the rest of Nico's career, and became a crucial music and visual prototype for the gothic rock movement of the post-punk era. == Background and recording == Nico had made her studio album debut in 1967 as a vocal collaborator in ''The Velvet Underground & Nico''. She had joined The Velvet Underground at the request of Andy Warhol —the band's manager at the time—, as he felt a chanteuse would add to the group.〔 Both Nico and The Velvet Underground were regulars at The Factory. The group, however, was unimpressed with Nico's abilities and reluctant to have her in the band.〔 This, coupled with her desire to be a soloist, made Nico decide to leave the group as casually as she had joined.〔 The band members continued to accompany Nico as she performed on her own, and eventually participated in her solo debut, ''Chelsea Girl'', released in 1967. The folk-pop album also featured songwriting credits by Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin, and Jackson Browne —with whom Nico had a short affair.〔 Although ''Chelsea Girl'' is well-regarded by music critics, Nico expressed rejection towards it, stating: "The first time I heard the album, I cried. I still cannot listen to it, because everything I wanted for that record, they took it away." Jim Morrison, who Nico later referred to as "() soul brother," encouraged her to write her own songs; Simon Reynolds described this as "a key breakthrough for ()." She subsequently began writing her own material, and performing in intimate circles at Steve Paul's club, The Scene.〔 Nico composed her music in a harmonium. According to Richard Witts, she bought it from a hippie in San Francisco, while Danny Fields recalls "I think Leonard Cohen may have given it to her, or had something to do with her getting it."〔 With that instrument, "she discovered not only her own artistic voice, but a whole new realm of sound." The droning pump organ would become her trademark.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Nico Biography )〕 ''The Marble Index'' was produced in a period of Nico's life that biographers tend to barely probe. For ''The Quietus''s Matthew Lindsay, "the liminal drift of these years only emphasizes the music's amorphous moorings and lack of precedent." Nico approached Danny Fields around the summer of 1968 with the desire to make an album to prove herself artistically.〔 Resentful towards her beauty, she radically changer her image, dyeing her hair red and wearing black clothes as an effort to distance herself from what had made her a popular fashion model.〔 John Cale said: "She hated the idea of being blonde and beautiful, and in some ways she hated being a woman, because she figured all her beauty had brought her was grief. () So ''The Marble Index'' was an opportunity for her to prove she was a serious artist, not just this kind of blonde bombshell." Nico already had the title for the album in mind, taken from ''The Prelude'', magnum opus of William Wordsworth; in it he contemplates a statue of Isaac Newton "with his prism and silent face / The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone." Fields took Nico's petition to Jac Holzman, head of Elektra Records.〔 She then went to Holzman's office in Broadway with her harmonium and performed for him.〔〔 Despite the challenging nature of Nico's music, Holzman agreed to make her album and assigned Frazier Mohawk as a producer, despite Nico and John Cale's desire to work together. He signed off on a budget of $10,000 with a recording schedule of four days in La Cienega, Los Angeles.〔〔 Cale was contacted by Fields, and worked in the album as the ''de facto'' producer, while Mohawk left him alone to work on it. Mohawk later said he had spent most of the sessions doing heroin with Nico.〔 Her drug use is usually cited as an influence in the album's sound, with Simon Reynolds writing: "While it may be a reductive interpretation to regard ''The Marble Index'' as the ultimate heroin album, its hunger for narcosis, its frigid expanses, recalls William Burrough's description of the junkie's quest for a metabolic 'Absolute Zero'."〔 Nico and Cale worked on a song at a time, mixing the album as they went; her voice and harmonium were the starting point for each track.〔 Regarding the recording process, Cale remarked: The harmonium was out of tune with everything. It wasn’t even in tune with itself. She insisted on playing it on everything so we had to figure out ways to separate her voice from it as much as possible and then find instrumental voices that would be compatible with the harmonium track. () As an arranger you’re usually trying to take the songs and put a structure on them, but what I thought was valuable was when you took the centre out of the track and worked around the central core of the tonality and changes. That left you with a sort of floating free-form tapestry behind what she was doing, which is when things became more abstract.〔 He also stated: "I was pretty much left alone for two days, and I let () in at the end. I played her (album ) song by song, and she'd burst into tears. 'Oh! It's so beautiful!', 'Oh, it's so beautiful!' You know, this is the same stuff that people tell me, 'Oh! It's so suicidal!'"〔 The finished album comprised eight tracks and lasted barely 30 minutes, which "was as much apparently as Frazier Mohawk, mixing and sequencing it, could stand without starting to feel suicidal."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Marble Index (album)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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