Maria & The Mirrors become a Madeleine

Previously, on Freq

Jonny Mugwump’s label is throwing up some breathless oddbits. Every release is a tabula rasa, a slash and burn policy. Exotic Pylon is as fidgety as the radio show, a spastic in space and time and genre (never truly separated). He’s releasing stuff like a psychedelic squid. So far (and this is just the stuff I’ve managed to keep up with) there’s been the sweetly benevolent soaring of Gentleforce (I did the sort of liner notes for this one) , the ‘kangaroos loose in top paddock’ (sort of an in-joke that even I've forgotten the source of) hip-slop of Infinite Livez, the mental jungle concrete of Ronny Juzzle, a resurgent Band Of Holy Joy (he kept hearing them when others turned away; and he was right) and now… this. 

Maria and The Mirrors have been described by Jonny as “two girls and a boy who like Bow Wow Wow and sound like Bow Wow Wow being chainsawed by a gabba Merzbow” but, while the cap certainly fits, I’m guessing this is most likely a direct lift from his J-Lo long rider request while captaining the good ship Vortex because, to me, these guys absolutely nail a particular sound that I’ve only heard once before. It was at the Glastonbury Festival (bear with me) and I’d done the wrong drugs at the wrong time and I’d somehow stumbled into CSS, performing at some hinterland or other. They were blasting out the hits, spinning in silver wigs, balloons floating and popping, music becoming their hot hot sex… 

 I could sort of remember how these tunes went but I couldn’t quite separate the music from the background noise: fairground trills, chatter, hum, inarticulate and out of time clapping (someone else had done the wrong drugs too). Noise infested, making the stage sway (it might have been me, I guess) and the sound was more or less like this EP. Listening in the cold light of morning, years later, Maria & The Mirrors became a Madeleine; an involuntary, flashbulb memory that just lurched up at me, completely out of the blue (and into the fire). Noise, enthusiasm and a sort of inchoate joy. Everything slightly smaller than real life, more child-like, ecstatic, immature in all the right ways… 

I’m probably hearing this wrong but… just watch. They think they sound like this too.