Manchester four-piece, Maruja, share hypnotic, instrumental odyssey, ‘The Tinker’. Weeping, wistful saxophone phrases are placed front and centre in the band’s most immersive track yet.
Sat on a wall, ‘The Tinker’ waits doubtlessly at a crossroads. Cobbled paths of jazz, post-punk and cinematic soundscapes veer off into the darkened horizons of each direction. Extracted from the flashes of an impassioned improv session, haunting motifs beautifully paint the mise-en-scène of 1930s Ireland. The band’s own Irish heritage and an old photograph became the kindling used to ignite this blaring flame. Don’t be fooled by this instrumental, as loudly as the singles that came before it, tales and fables are heard within.
Maruja’s choreography of these foreboding dances becomes more and more virtuosic. Fidgeting agitations of haunting ostinatos that continuously grow before eventually imploding with unparalleled beauty. Deeply woven layers of textual nuance, raging rhythms, and a myriad of melodic cacophonies, set the tone for the future of post-punk while retelling what once had been. Perhaps, “there is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.”
After the roaring success of their first three releases, Maruja have begun to etch their name into the looking glass of jazz-infused chaos. From these singles alone, this quartet are by far one of Manchester’s most exciting and radical outfits to emerge in the last few years.
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