Armand Margjeka

Location: Birmingham, Alabama Genre: indie/folk Hometown: Tropojë, Albania Label: PIPEANDGUN/COMMUNICATING VESSELS Born in Tropoia, a small town nestled in the Albanian Alps, Armand Margjeka’s musical influences were drip fed during his formative years as Western music slowly made its way into a country still reeling from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Western cinema, MTV Europe, and a fortuitous cassette tape of American pop/rock legends Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley taught Margjeka the fundamentals of rock and roll, and subsequently the English language. The second LP from Armand Margjeka was conceived as An Exhibition of 10 Works representing a series of creative recording sessions with a diverse and talented core of musicians. Hummingbird is the collective result of Margjeka’s production aesthetic complemented by three-time Grammy award winner Darrell Thorp (Radiohead, Beck, Outkast, Gnarls Barkley), Chris Steffen (Stereophonics, Ben Harper) and Eric Masse (Escondido, Rayland Baxter). The album marks the continued intentional direction established by Margjeka’s debut solo album Margo Margo (2011) of creating honest art endeavors without preconceived parameters. The Birmingham musician and producer thrives on a fascination with the process of making great records; the intentional, incidental and accidental sounds that breathe life into a record and capture the imagination. “Some call it getting up and going to work everyday, others illustrate it as feeding the monster. I’m not advocating some cheap cop-out like ‘rejection is art’, but rejection is innate to this world of exposing fears. The voice echoing ‘this isn’t good enough’ gives meaning/direction to my search and keeps me honest,” says Margjeka. Armand Margjeka's sophomore release Hummingbird releases June 10th 2014 via PIPEANDGUN and Communicating Vessels.