Melanina combines the raw and blasted jagged edged beauty of The Jesus and Mary Chain, the more grunge infused drive of Dinosaur Jr. and the modern mindset of The Editors. It wanders between fragile soundscaping and walls of garage rock weight. It gazes both skyward and, ironically, at its own shoes, is musically intense and intimate yet expansive and all-consuming.
Whilst Hawaii drives on pulsing bass lines and staccato beats, and Appear wanders down some fractured but melodic highways, sitting alongside Desfile at the more conventional end of the record, opener, Act 2, is a strange and beguiling piece, twisting and turning through progressive structures and wonderfully wandering dynamic shifts.
Effects heavy bands often use their technological building blocks to bludgeon the listener, to try and convey the grandeur of the new musical age or possibly soundtrack its destruction. Maff sit somewhere between; sculptors of hypnotic dreamscapes and sonorous bliss in a musically apolitical age. Ecstasy but without the clubbing!
