Blake Markle is a multi-instrumentalist who has been making music for decades, and his many influences are clearly reflected in his varied musical output. With a background in jazz and rock music, he was not particularly interested in electronic music until the early sounds of jungle and drum & bass caught his ear in 1995. As a student of electroacoustic music, and armed with the purchase of a new sampler and sequencer, he delved into learning the techniques used to create this new music, experimenting with everything from dub to techno, electronic jazz-fusion, and experimental beats. After completing a bachelor's degree in physics, he decided to take his master's in music technology. This was an opportunity to extend many of the signal processing techniques learned in science to the field of music. The end product was a thesis on the subject of time stretching, a concept that involves changing the length of a sound without affecting the pitch. This process is crucial to Blake's music, which inevitably involves the use of sampled drum loops. For the thesis, several algorithms for different methods of time stretching were written and tested on a variety of sounds. As a result, many sounds in Blake's music have been processed by the custom algorithms used in the thesis.
By 2000, Blake had embarked on an extensive project to rework of the music of Miles Davis. Specifically, he chose to remix the entire album "Filles de Kilimanjaro" which was originally released in 1968. A true labor of love which took nearly a year to complete, this exercise was where Blake honed his unique beat cutting skills. He was an artist-in-residence at Banff Center for the Arts in 2001, and the following year he founded the now legendary "Plateau Flexout" at Saphir Nightclub, the only weekly night for IDM & breakcore in Montreal. Fast-forward to 2005, where his achievements included the release of two epic albums, "Sabres High" as Black Market and "Isis" under the alias Zark Behida. The latter was a sprawling sci-fi prog-jungle concept album, presented in the form of an online storybook with pictures and text corresponding to each of the 22 tracks. It was voted 15th best album of the year by Tiny Voices. In 2006, Blake toured Europe as part of the Panospria label showcase with Ruairi Lazers and Scant Intone, rocking parties from Berlin to Amsterdam to Dublin.
His releases under a variety of aliases have surfaced on a variety of labels including Wikkid, g25, Trotch, Acroplane, JungleXpeditions, and Panospria. A tireless live performer, he has shared the stage with such artists as Mu-Ziq, Venetian Snares, Lowfish, Vorpal, Duran Duran Duran, Enduser, David Kristian, 1-Speed Bike, Drop the Lime and many others. Blake represented Montreal in the first ever Philadelphia Laptop Battle in 2004, as well as high profile bookings at Montreal Jazz Festival, Pop Montreal, and Suoni Per il Popolo.
In 1998 Julian’s four track recorder was tragically destroyed. A sound tracker completely changed everything and Hitori Tori was born. Agitated breaks became combined with tweaked arpeggiated synth lines, some cut up vocals, and a few lugubrious tones were thrown into the background for good measure. He has released on many labels over the past decade, including Peace Off Records, Kaometry and Meganeural.
Hitori’s live performances have received positive acclaim in publications such as Computer Music Magazine and Create Digital Music. Over the past several years Hitori Tori has toured in Japan and Europe, including dates at festivals such as Bangface Weekender and Breakcore Gives Me Wood.
