the marble tea

Children's songs for adults. That's how Knight Berman Jr once described the music he writes and records as the Marble Tea, but it doesn't tell the full story. Grown-up topics like hiding from the law, excruciating ennui, and impotence have all found their way into songs in some fashion or another, and his affirmation that "I haven't met a child yet that I could sit and have a smoke with" further distances us from that original statement.

Berman's I'm Batman EP was selected as CD of the Year for 2004 at IndepenDisc.com, and three of his recordings were featured in the toddler-friendly LittleWalks New York video. Along the way, he's contributed to a compilation of "tiny pop songs," tribute records to Richard Brautigan and the Jazz Butcher, and provided theme music for cartoons on the internet.

Through an unpretentious brand of indie pop, his 2006 Fantastic Day EP examined the underlying connection between life's smallest things with the grander design behind it all, and the English/Drake Single (Summer 2007) chronicles adventures in feline domesticity.

So what does the music sound like? Comparisons to the Magnetic Fields, Jonathan Richman, Robyn Hitchcock, early Beck, the Kinks - even "a happy Lou Reed" - have all been made and may serve as a nice starting point.

He is currently working on numerous projects which may or may not reach completion.