Marc Soucy is a Boston-based composer, keyboardist, and producer who has been writing and performing music since childhood, with formal piano training starting before he turned four. His career runs through classical, progressive rock, jazz fusion, world music, funk, and folk styles, all merged into what he and others describe as hybrid, eclectic compositions, mostly played and produced by Soucy himself on keyboards before being shaped into finished tracks. He spent 14 years working as an independent producer and engineer, and in recent years he has been releasing a long-running body of new material under his “STIR” series alongside licensing-focused instrumental work for film, TV, and media.
Long before any of that, Soucy co-founded a progressive rock trio called Antartica in 1981 with drummer Ray Lavigne and bassist Jeff Carano. The band is no longer together, but Soucy has called it one of the most meaningful chapters of his musical life, and in recent years he’s been going back through the group’s old recordings, restoring and mastering material that had been sitting untouched for decades. Antartica LIVE is the result, a growing series of live recordings from the trio’s original run that Soucy has been reviving one release at a time.
The Story Behind the Recordings
Most of this material was captured live in 1983 in the stone cellar of a farmhouse in Dracut, Massachusetts, using nothing but three room microphones with no overdubs and no studio polish layered on afterward. Soucy has spent stretches of the past few years restoring and mastering the surviving tapes, and the results carry a genuinely raw, in-the-room quality that’s hard to fake decades after the fact. Carano’s bass playing is a constant presence throughout, Lavigne’s drumming drives the trio forward with real chemistry, and Soucy’s keyboard work is loose, dissonant, and clearly the sound of a young musician still figuring out exactly how far he could push an idea.
What’s Out So Far
Here’s what’s actually been released from the upcoming album to date.
Mayhem In Antarctica
The series’ breakout entry and the clearest showcase of what makes these tapes special. An eight-minute instrumental that opens with a windswept, atmospheric hush before the trio pushes into increasingly urgent, controlled-chaos territory, with Soucy’s shapeshifting synth work leading the charge over a rhythm section that never loses the plot no matter how far the piece wanders.
Charlie Backwards
A fast, technically dense piece of progressive jazz-rock that plays like a wink toward Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown theme, flipped inside out into something considerably wilder. It’s built around a tight, high-energy interplay between piano, bass, and drums, with the trio locking into an almost telepathic groove despite the raw, single-take conditions it was recorded under.
No This Isn’t Jazz Either
An inside joke turned song title, born from the band being repeatedly mistaken for jazz musicians back in the day. At around ten minutes, it’s one of the longer entries in the series, giving the trio plenty of room to move between moods and tempos without ever settling into one lane for long.
Accelerator
This one does have vocals by Marc and is incredibly energetic. It also notably features a fourth player, guitarist Al Korosy, alongside Carano and Lavigne, expanding the core trio’s sound for this particular recording. Definitely a standout for the live tracks.
Clem’s Cakewalk
This is the most recent addition to the upcoming album, pulled from a 1982 live performance and released this past May. This one combines the a version of a cakewalk with a jazz themed chord structure. According to Marc, “the original vocal melody has been modified to fit a horn section to keep the song more complete.”
The Out Cats
The longest and most ambitious piece in the series at nearly eleven minutes, an expansive prog-rock journey that channels the spirit of classic-era Genesis, Yes, and Rush while still sounding like a young band with something to prove. It was originally billed as the closing chapter of the archive project, a fitting farewell to the trio’s original run, though Soucy has continued pulling more material from the vault since.
Final Thoughts
Antartica: LIVE is a genuinely rare thing, a decades-old time capsule that still sounds vital instead of merely historical. There’s more still to come from the archive, and based on what’s already surfaced, it’s well worth keeping an eye on as Marc Soucy continues reviving this formative chapter of his musical life.
The new album will be released on July 24th, 2026. You can find Marc Soucy on his official website, on Spotify, on Facebook, and on Instagram. What did you think of the series so far? Stay tuned to
MusicOnTheRox.com for all your music news and reviews.
