Reviews
June: 18 albums you need to hear this month
You've got a lot of listening to do
Mala 'Mirrors' (Brownswood)
Mala doesn’t rush things. This album, built around musical patterns and influences from Peru, has been four years in the making, and it seems like his approach has been evolving during that time. Where previous album ‘Mala In Cuba’ blended the steady-stepping sub-bass and rhythms of DMZ with relatively recognisable Cuban sounds, here he plays on the lesser familiarity of Peruvian music and adapts his own production into far more alien structures. There’s still a monumental dub undertow, but the structures take the percussion, pan-flutes and vocal refrains into spaces simultaneously ancient and futuristic. Sometimes the album’s pacing drifts a little, but that’s a price worth paying for being taken to such mysterious places.
8/10
