The Tick Who Gets to Be the Hero Tonight

I’ll be honest: Marsimoto has never been my thing. Marsimoto is the green alter ego of Marteria—one of the most consistently good German rappers working, responsible for tracks like OMG! and Kids (2 Finger an den Kopf) that I’d happily listen to on rotation indefinitely—and the Marsimoto persona involves pitch-shifted vocals and a kind of deliberately unhinged absurdism that I respect more than I enjoy. Given a choice, I’d take Marteria unfiltered for the rest of his career.

That said: Marsimoto is still better than ninety-nine percent of what the German music industry manages to push out in any given quarter, and waiting for Marteria’s next proper album requires patience I don’t always have. So here we are.

Zecken raus—roughly "Ticks Out"—is the new track, and the video turned out to be a small thing I wasn’t expecting to enjoy as much as I did. A tick, cheerful and completely unbothered by the hostile world around it, hops through a dark forest while larger, meaner creatures give chase. You watch this tiny creature and find yourself rooting for it despite everything you know about ticks and what they do to you when you wander through long grass. That’s good character work. Or the right kind of absurd. Our unusual hero has worse nights ahead, probably. For now, it owns the forest.

Marteria’s album will come eventually. Until then, I’m apparently watching animated ticks navigate the midnight woods and feeling fine about it. There are worse ways to spend July.