Intervals: Never Taking Breaks & Never Fearing the Niche

For the uninitiated, Aaron Marshall is a guitar-playing and songwriting prodigy from Toronto, Canada, operating under the moniker Intervals. He is essentially a one-man band, although of course he brings touring musicians with him when he goes on the road. The majority of his output is all-instrumental progressive rock and metal, and the fact that the scene, for such a relatively obscure style of music, is strong enough around the world to sustain an excellent career doing what he loves the most, is far from lost on him.

"It's the best it's ever been," he opines gratefully. "The fact that I get to play guitar and it's the means to my end, if you'd told me that five to eight years ago, I'd have told you, 'You're out of your mind, there's no way I'm making it out of my parents' basement with this shit.'

"My Dad and I joke about that all the time, I'll check in from wherever, Bratislava or something and he'll say, 'How the hell did you wind up there?' and I'll say, 'I don't know, Dad, I'll talk to you later!'" he laughs.

Marshall is far from put off by the fact that the style of music he creates exists very much in a niche bracket, in fact he revels in it. "Honestly, I'm really thankful," he states. "The term 'niche' is nothing to be scared of these days, because it just narrows down who you need to cater to, and that's probably better than trying to reach for the sky all the time."

He is set to bring his insane live show Down Under for the second time, less than two years since his maiden voyage here when he did a run of dates with Aussie guitar wizard Plini in 2016. The fact that he is back out here again so soon makes Marshall confident that he will be a reasonably regular visitor to our shores from here on in, despite the insane distance.

"I would hope so," he says. "It's about the furthest from here that you can go, but it's totally worth it. I think from a promotions point of view, with the powers that be that bring out acts to Australia, there is something to be said for leaving space between these types of ventures. But I'd love to come as much as possible, come down, do a club run, do a festival, I love it down there."

The entity known as Intervals has a burgeoning back-catalogue now, and Marshall aims to cover as much of that as possible on this run, especially since he is also going to Asia, and doing dates in New Zealand for the first time while he is on this side of the planet. "Yeah, that's the plan," he says. "We're actually touring Japan and South East Asia before we get to Australia and New Zealand, so I'm trying to bring as much as I can from all of the notable releases.

"There's going to be a good dose of The Way Forward, The Shape Of Colour, some In Time stuff, and anything else I can fit in."

Speaking of the way forward, Marshall plans to continue writing, recording and releasing music and touring the planet for as long as he possibly can, particularly with the progressive music scene as healthy as it is in the present era. "That's pretty much it, dude, the grind is real," he says. "It's a slow burn upwards, and I have to make hay while this sun is shining.

"I've had a little bit of time off since doing the European headliner and North American headliner, I came in for a crash landing, which has been nice, but then we're firing up for some regional shows around here and then some festivals in July. I'll spend August preparing for this Asia, Australia and New Zealand thing coming up. I'll take October off and then we've got something very exciting coming up for North America in November, so that's my year in the bag. Then I might start writing again. I've had some ideas, but at that point I'll start pursuing it militantly, as I do!"