Markus Wormstorm (
Autechre and Miriam Makebas' love child) is alot more then just an unfortunate surname.He was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and started writing electronic music at the tender age of fifteen. He attended a local art school where he studied both Drama and Music. At the age of 16 Markus had formed a small theater group, which put on annual performances at the schools theater. These "performances" where often skit based, and though poorly executed, politically fuelled and enthusiastically academic, these shows where really nothing more than a good excuse for Markus and his friends to wear more then their usuall amount of eye liner, get naked and pour stage blood all themselves and the audiance (teachers included). Markus wrote, directed, and wrote the music for these shows.
At the age of 18 Markus moved to Cape Town, after convincing his parents that he needed to study there. Shortly after dropping out of University he sold a song to African Dope records for five thousand rand. He used the money to buy himself a cd writer, and so doing was able to burn a hundred copies of his first solo album "Rachel the Bear". By some small miracle one of these cd's found it's way to New York city, and was soon after contacted by
Sound-ink records and offered a deal in 2001.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=206255621&s=1
Things snowballed from there following the release of the Hookers ep on Sound-ink in 2003, and the release of The Constructus Corp. ( a collaberation between Waddy Tudor Jones, Markus and Markus' new found friend Simon) by African Dope records also in 2003. At some point Markus was contacted by Daniel Levi, a young director who was making a name for himself abroad ( doing music videos for the likes of Prodigy and Massive Attack), and so Markus was offered his first opportunity to design music to picture ( this will become relevent in a moment).
After The Constuctus Corp. broke up Simon and Markus teamed up to form The Real Estate Agents. The Real Estate Agents are a instrumental tec based downtempo-electro outfit who's sound has been explained as the following : "Put-your-mamma-in-a-headlock-,-jam-on-a-magnet-type-type-o-hype-o-make-your-face-ugly-type-of-shit-!" They've enjoyed large local as well as international interest, after the release of their first self titled album in 2005, closely followed by there second album in 2006named Pizza's (both on African Dope)
http://www.myspace.com/therealestateagentslive
At around that time Markus returned to his early day theatrics as a new collective was born, namely The Black Heart Gang. The Black Heart Gang (consisting of Markus, his cousin Jannes and childhood friend Ree) is a fantasy art collective, in which Markus was once again allowed to write, their second project (The Tale of How) which was completed in 2006 had received critical acclaim internationally such as winning the best international film at the Bradford Animation Festival Awards, winning the Canal + Prix award at the Cleremon Ferrand film festival. Apart from that The Tale of How was named in the top ten at the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival and is also the flagship piece for the Resfest international film festival for 2007.
theblackheartgang.com
They are prenently working on their next project " The Tale Of Then"
Markus newest project is a band called Sweat.X!, a electro dance outfit with mc Spoek Mathambo ...presently signed to the London based lable Citinite.
http://www.myspace.com/sweatx
Presently Markus lives in CapeTown. He ownes a company , named SayThankYou, with his two friend Duncan and Simon, two studio's in the heart of the city. He writes music for television and film, and is 25 years old.