Born and raised 40 miles east of Los Angeles and hailing from a multicultural, music-loving family, singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Marlon Funaki has long been fascinated by the exploration of sound. From a young age, Funaki was obsessed with the music his father played around the house while doing household chores and voraciously absorbing everything within earshot. Hearing bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Led Zeppelin, My Bloody Valentine, and Pink Floyd, along with reggae, ‘70s Afro-funk, and ‘90s hip-hop, became significant influences, rather than the music he had played as a middle school student in symphonic and marching bands. 

As much as he loved playing his first instrument, drums, Funaki needed a creative outlet to explore the sounds he was interested in. Eventually, he left those restrictive band structures to join the school jazz band, which allowed at least a little more creative space where he’d play until he graduated high school. 

“Once I left band, I started digging into my own ideas or the sounds that I liked,” he says. 

Following the purchase of his first electric guitar (for which he sold his Xbox) when he was a sophomore in high school, Funaki became completely immersed with playing music. “Playing guitar was way cooler than gaming and it became an addiction,” he says, “my real passion.  After learning  guitar, I had to teach myself how to play all the instruments on my own.” 

Using the skills he learned as an avid gamer, Funaki pored over each note. He began mastering bass, drums, keys and started composing his own original material. 

After high school, Funaki started busking in downtown Redlands with a friend as often as he could, in hopes they would collect enough money in their guitar cases to fund their ride home. It often worked. People began to stop and listen as if entranced by what they heard.  That became “enough of a success” for him to decide that making music was now his chosen full-time vocation. 

Funaki landed a job working at the local Guitar Center which allowed him to buy instruments and recording equipment and immediately invested endless hours into learning how to produce, mix, master, and record by himself. He took what he learned from listening to his father jam and started weaving his own disparate influences and tastes into something all his own.  

“My father never forced music on me,” he says. “I adapted and started loving it on my own. Eventually, I kind of branched out, did my own research to discover things that meant something to me.” 

Funaki’s skills and mastery of instrumentation blossomed exponentially. Once his brother moved out of the family home, he built a make-shift recording studio in the vacant bedroom; his prowess and confidence grew. So much so that he’d break and blend various styles to create a distinctly personal sound signature of his own design. With the wide-eyed motivation of a sonic scientist and the control of a skilled surgeon, Funaki was eager to finally deliver his songs to the unknowing world. He set aside four weeks off from his Guitar Center gig to immerse himself in his studio only taking breaks to eat and maybe sleep. He came away with enough good material which would become his first EP. 

In 2020, he self-released his debut 6-song EP, The Universal Language followed by his first full-length album Monterey Village, in 2022. Listeners around the globe would soon discover and embrace his ethereal yet emotive brand of floaty psychedelia, mixing equal parts atmospherics with youthful, guitar-driven energy into cinematic songflow.  

New tracks continued to follow, along with self-financed coast-to-coast tours powered by word of mouth buzzing about his passionate live shows that filled house and basement parties, which grew into warehouse shows and soon propelled onto the national club circuit, where every show would sell out well in advance.  The word was no longer underground.  

Now signed to Warner Records, Funaki follows his own singular path, constantly searching and exploring new soundscapes that will continue to evolve and push the limits of creative expression free from any kind of genrefication.  “I still don't think I've truly found my definitive, specific sound,” he says. “Yet I don't know if I ever will, which I think could be a good thing.” 

He craves being in a studio creating, allowing him to connect with his true self, free from restrictions, with only a pure passion to explore and grow in all directions that feel right to Funaki. “In a studio is where I can think and be the most vulnerable person I can be,” he says. “I can channel that into my art and my music.”  

A magnetic, engaging, natural on-stage personality backed by an equally potent band of like-minded friends that have the ability to kinetically respond to his compositions, Funaki has become one of the hottest and sharpest young musicians to emerge onto the indie scene. As much as he loves being on the road, creating and composing is where he’s at his most comfortable. It shows in his meticulous attention to detail, which has been channeled in his recordings. Funaki estimates that when composing his first recordings, he would  dissect every aspect of each track and play every instrument himself in search of a perfect sound.  “I'm a hermit crab,” he says. “I like to be in my studio. I love to make music. This is what I do when I’m not on tour.” 

After spending the better part of the past couple of years on the road playing to packed clubs filled with enthusiastic young fans, Funaki is excited to return to his Southern California home studio preparing his next set of genre-melding releases. His unique blend of soulful, psychedelic indie rock, with R&B, hip-hop and flourishes of shoegaze and jazz allows his muse to move in any/all directions at once and still come away sounding only like Marlon Funaki.   

His Warner Records debut track is a dreamy, Latin groove-infused “Let You In,” set for a January 9th release. In the months ahead, his yet-untitled forthcoming major label EP, finds the artist unafraid to explore all sonic possibilities, including the proggy “Skin,” are texturized, dizzying soul-driven journeys, while the deliberate melodies of “Trillion Things” and “Meant to Be” highlight Funaki’s lyrical prowess.  “It still amazes me to this day that something that I made in my bedroom traveled this far,” he says of his rising popularity with an ever-growing global fan base. “It’s cool to see how far that music travels.” 

This is just the beginning of the next exciting chapter in a truly exciting musical universe.