Maxim Marlo

Maxim Marlo is a conscious and ceremonial music artist based on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. He creates world, ambient, ceremonial and acoustic music, soundscapes and immersive live experiences. His Insight Timer page also describes him as a musician, mentor, meditation instructor and sound healing therapist. He describes his aim as creating worlds through music that people can step into: music that holds space rather than fills it, and music to experience, not only to listen to.

Maxim grew up in Germany playing instruments, writing songs and imagining stages long before he understood what being an artist could mean. That instinct grew quieter as education, work and business took over. His Insight Timer page says he began a journey of personal growth at 16 and founded his first company at 20 while living abroad. He then spent over a decade moving between artistic and business fields in the startup and innovation space. He is also a licensed personal trainer and studied psychology part-time at university. In 2021 he made a radical change: he let go of the life he had built in Berlin's startup world and eventually found his way to Costa Rica. He writes that finding his way back to music has been less about becoming someone new and more about remembering something that was there from the beginning.

His first song after the move was Ocean, which he describes as the start of a new chapter lived more aligned with his soul. His first releases grew from a simpler singer-songwriter world. Living close to nature, ceremony and a deeply creative community gradually opened a much wider musical language. Today his music moves between acoustic songs, world instruments, ambient and cinematic textures, devotional and ceremonial influences, rhythm, improvisation and electronic elements. He works with voice, acoustic and world instruments and elements of nature. Rather than staying inside one genre, he looks for the sound a particular feeling or experience asks for.

His recent releases show that range. The EP re:awakened is an organic electronic reimagining of his earlier work Awaken the Spirit. The single Danza Ancestral (Chant for the Ancestors) is a chant for the ancestors. Anusara Invocation (Om Namah Shivaya Gurave) is a devotional piece made with Fern Olivia and Pranamor, rooted in kirtan, yoga and ceremonial music. It is built around the traditional Sanskrit invocation with an original melody and arrangement. Fern's lead vocal is joined by vocal improvisation, shruti box, silver flute and harmonica, and the piece is intimate, spacious and meditative.

Maxim's live work follows the same approach. He wants a performance to become a world people can step into, moving between listening, stillness, rhythm and shared participation, somewhere between concert and ceremony. His website also lists retreats and companion journals for the Awaken the Spirit and Ocean EP releases. It is a fit for people drawn to yoga, kirtan, meditation and ceremonial gatherings, and for anyone who wants music as a space to feel, remember and reconnect. He sums up his work as different forms with one golden thread: transformation through sound. He takes inquiries for bookings, collaborations and press through his website.