Charles Marlow
Marlow's name may be inspired by the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Conrad's father was a translator of William Shakespeare who doubtless would have known of Marlowe's work as well. Some intertextual interpretations of "Heart of Darkness" have suggested that Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" may have influenced Conrad. Charles Marlow describes a character as a "papier-mache Mephistopheles", a reference to the Faust legend. Marlow's and Kurtz's journey up the Congo River in "Heart of Darkness" also has similarities to another work by Marlowe, "Dido, Queen of Carthage", in which Aeneas is stranded on the shore of Libya and meets the African queen Dido.
Hearts of Darknesses
Hearts of Darknesses is the solo project of IDM producer Frank Musarra. Musarra is a longtime studio collaborator with Gregg Gillis, both as a producer/engineer in the project Girl Talk and as a producer/artist in their remix collective Trey Told 'Em. However, Musarra's music has been described as the "mirror opposite" of Girl Talk's, and his concert performances as "a punk-rock version of Girl Talk's proscenium-stage radio-rock."