LA producer Maral's third album Ground Groove received a fair amount of critical praise last year. I'm not ashamed to admit that this praise is the root cause of why this review exists. While it's true that I hold my independence in high regard, there is nothing wrong with peering over the hedge once in a while to see what my neighbors have cooking.* But enough about my "peers,"** what's Maral's deal? We'll her deal is that she's taken up residence in my head. More or less literally! She's absolutely filled in the cracks in the foundation of my mind in the strangest kind of way. I know this album is called Ground Groove, but I did not anticipate that its tones and textures would be quite so inceptive. Like the album has rumbled forth from the iron disco ball that churns in the Earth's core, with vibrations issuing vertically into the spinning layers of this sphere's mantle, and then quickening through the soles of my feet, leaping like lightening from my tibias, to my hips, to my spine, and then slithering like a snake up a drainage pipe into my brain. What's more, the mixing makes these sounds feel eerily and completely localized, like I'm the only one who can hear them,*** as if I'm receiving them via microwave transmission in some kind of DARPA-funded direct sound experiment. It's very exciting stuff... even if it's permanently warped my filling.
Don't go without checking out Leaving Records.
*To be fair, I haven't actually read other reviews for this album. I'm only admitting that I know that they exist, and the mere knowledge of the existence of these other reviews is the reason that I checked out this album.
**People on Twitter who I spy on.
***And NOT just because I'm wearing headphones... although that does help.
