I love Portugal! I really love Portugal! And yes I love Portugal! This year two of my most highly enjoyable releases came from Portugal. The first one was Black Bombaim's "Titans" and the second one is by Maize. Coming from Viseu, they released their debut EP a month ago. It was meant to be included in the upcoming "Quick Fixes" session since we're talking about an EP BUT its four tracks are reaching a play-length of 41 minutes and secondly, it instantly became a favorite and has hooked me up for days... So I decided to treat it like an album... Ladies and gents I give you Maize...
The truth is that I'm a really big fan of long, illusive, spaced out jamming meditative processes or simply put, heavy psych jams. I adore 10+ minutes songs... Give me three-four minutes of tension building intros, leading to six-seven minutes of mind blowing huge riffs and dazed solos, and I'll be happy as hell. At the same time when it comes to this kind of stuff, I'm very eclectic. I believe that anyone could create a long tune and name it "jam", "psychedelia" etc. but only a few would have the craftsmanship to take you in an epic space trip. One of them is Maize.
All four tracks are mainly instrumental and when occasionally vocals are used, they're working completely supplementary to the music as a fourth separate instrument or something like "special effects". Daniel's guitar works like crazy throughout Maize EP. Sometimes it's laying back, chilling like in "L" and others is going frenzy like in "U" or "P".
And since One does not simply walk into the Space Cathedral Of Holy Fuzziness, two more noble travelers take part in the journey. Ricardo with his truculent bass lines and Pedro with his poisonous drum passages complete this mammoth trio. Beside the trippy stoned out psychedelia, they don't lack of aggressive moments full of eruptions, riff attacks and haunting undertones (see "U").
Their debut is bloody brilliant! Maize did an excellent job in the musical part, creating four beautifully crafted jams with perfect flow and brilliantly balancing between smooth, peaceful melodies and fuzzy, furious outbursts. Production is superb too... If you're a fan of bands like Earthless, Black Bombaim, Tia Carrera, Carlton Melton or even Radio Moscow then you ought to check it out. Highly recommended!
Written by Thanos
Tracklist:
01. A
02. U
03. L
04. P
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