MALAKAI and Colony Productions Pair Up to Release Axiome

MALAKAI’s musical acumen has been at the forefront of his career from the jump; eschewing sound design and genre trends at every turn, he has instead carved out a warm, cinematic territory amongst his chilled-out contemporaries. His meticulous, emotionally charged tracks soar across stereo space, channeling experiential dives into sonic dreamscapes born in the center of MALAKAI’s creative domain. As each release sees the light of day, the fog of war rolls back on the next footsteps in the MALAKAI story, accessing ever more novel boundaries of music production and arrangement. In partnership with the venerable Colony Productions, he’s finally cracked the seal on 2020’s first suite of MALAKAI machinations: Axiome.

Axiome’s offerings are quintessentially in line with the constant variable across MALAKAI’s discography'; a musical styling that places notation at the helm of the ship, steering compositions through glitchy astroid belts and featherweight musical nebulas. While the territory’s charm remains familiar, Axiome explores a more rugged terrain than previous MALAKAI EP’s, with a grit, width, and movement that builds on the robust characteristics of his music. The egress into that terrain is “Apollo”, an ode to the transient god of music, knowledge, and the sun. Stuttered arpeggios roll across a bed of sub weight, cushioning the melody and filling out the sparser corners of the spectrum. It’s a serenade amongst reverberant tones and mothballed frequencies that round together to form a smooth, contiguous musical torus. The heft in “Apollo” is counterbalanced by the EP’s amicable farewell, “Solace"“; a gentle cascade of legato bends and slides meet harmonious, supple chord phrasing for a novel, starlit dance through synthesis. It’s the characteristic MALAKAI thumbprint, complete with choice granular cuts and a careful serving of liquid low end, and it wraps up the EP with the same multi-hued aesthetic that turns the very first pages of Axiome.

MALAKAI’s catalog continues to simultaneously evolve its production standards while traversing each successive phase of the MALAKAI journey. It’s an even-paced waltz through stereophonic sound, translating an emotional output into a musical frame of reference. The transition from Odd Views to Axiome feels as biological as it is methodical, and while we’re soaking up the fruits of MALAKAI’s most recent labor, we can’t help but keep our eyes and ears aimed squarely at his future.

Axiome is currently available for purchase on Bandcamp, and will become available for stream and download from all other major platforms on the 17th of July. You can pre-save the release on Spotify here.

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MALAKAI - Milieux

Over a year has passed since the release of MALAKAI’s Saros, an ambitious and exploratory EP that set the standard for future productions from this sonic sage. Since then, he has compulsively honed in on his signature tones and high-fidelity synthesis textures, stirring and broiling his choice ingredients and audio engineering education into a perfect fusion. One result is Milieux, a matured collection of melody-driven compositions that puts MALAKAI squarely on par with the fidelity-driven cornerstone producers of the modern age.

Milieux is remarkable for its richly-colored atmospheres and instrumental dialogue. The balance of clarity in the mix coupled with sufficient textural evolution and tonal layering is paramount to the MALAKAI musical vision, and he enacts said vision with the confidence of an auditory Philippe Petit. His righteous pursuit of pure aural experiences has brought out the best of his abilities to date, and while arrangement has always been a particular strong suit for MALAKAI, his translation and interpretation of musical language has become his most striking characteristic.

The opening track “Appa”, for example, is as aloof and playful as its namesake bison companion; a collaborative piece created with Smigonaut, the composition follows a crescendoed dance of supple warps and counter tones that gradually evolve into a mist of low-frequency oscillations. In a similar display of MALAKAI’s familiar percussive melodies, “Prunes” is a delicious, pitted groove that shuffles between anchoring bass lines and warm plucks that bounce around the upper registers. While his note choice and tonal dialogue are the backbones of his compositional structure, his use of stereo depth is the life that he breathes into his music. “Ubuntu” features an arrangement soaked in reverb and meticulously crafted to make the most of spacial dynamics, resulting in an appropriately airy track that rises and falls with the available frequency space from measure to measure. Bringing an energetic end to the EP is a particularly rusty collaboration with 5AM titled “What’s Matter”, a symphonic, orchestral finale to this four-part auditory adventure. Developing along a minor melody that sings through the speakers like angels at the gates, the track blasts headfirst into an emotive explosion of the largest synthesis featured on the EP, serving as a reminder that all is not always so subtle and spatially humble with MALAKAI’s musical vision.

In conjunction with the exposition of his highest musical watermark to date, MALAKAI is primed to take the stage this coming Saturday at Tipper’s highly anticipated three-night King’s Theatre run. In the short time between now and then, Milieux is available through the venerable Street Ritual on all major music platforms, primed and ready to emulsify in eager eardrums. While you’re not sleeping ‘til Brooklyn, don’t sleep on getting intimate with the musical mechanications of this atmospheric pioneer.

FOLLOW MALAKAI: Soundcloud / Spotify / Facebook / Official

Kalaha - Mama Ngoma

Sometimes bands combine seemingly disparate music styles into one cohesive sound. In doing so, they remind listeners that styles which may seem far apart either physically, stylistically, or both, are actually closer to one another than they appear. The Danish group Kalaha allows us to experience this phenomenon through their new EP Mama Ngoma. As the group’s first release in almost two years, Mama Ngoma paints a dreamscape of energetic electronica from a foundation of traditional West African music.

Kalaha was born as a live act at the Strøm Festival in Copenhagen where the band members - Rumpistol (Jens Christiansen), Spejderrobot (Mikael Elkjær), guitarist Niclas Knudsen, and drummer Emil de Waal - came together in haste to offer a “supergroup” performance to enliven the festival. Since then, Kalaha has recorded four studio releases and taken the stage together more than 100 times, where they’re acclaimed for whipping audiences into dance-driven frenzies. “All of the band members have very strong knowledge in at least one of the musical styles/genres mentioned,” Emil writes via email. A prolific percussionist, he’s described as the “backbone” of the band. “Nevertheless, we have very different ways of approaching the music…Somehow we respect each other´s approaches in a way that allows the diverse music styles to flow and blend freely.”

The EP pays homage to West African musical styles, particularly highlife, which earned its name because performances originally took place in exclusive, high-society settings where musicians played traditional Akan (a West African meta-ethnicity) rhythms and melodies through amplified instruments. These motifs are jumping-off points for Kalaha, but not ideas to be emulated “I don't think of Kalaha as a band that aims to recreate tradition,” Mikael writes. “We are more into being inspired by music we know and like. The different genres and traditions are more of a inspirational framework that allows us to make and play music we love.”

The two electronic musicians in the group, Rumpistol and Spejderrobot, are also its producers. In this role they are absolutely dialed-in, no pun intended. They mix electronic and acoustic material masterfully. The drums, rich and organic in timbre, shuffle and strike like a strong dance beat while synthesizers shine in colorful contrast to electric guitar licks. Kalaha has no traditional bassist, and usually Jens and Mikael mix synthesizers with different characteristics to create driving bass rhythms. On Mama Ngoma, however, they invited Danish bassist Flemming Muus and Louis Winding to track basslines.

“Dragon Jenny”, the first single from Mama Ngoma, is also its most plainly beautiful song. At just over six minutes long, “Dragon Jenny” moves through different atmospheres that are first inviting, then disorienting, but ultimately euphoric. Tonal percussion and a deep, twanging bassline by Muus (“We bring the bass part with us live in Spejderrobot´s computer,” says Emil) combine to create an undulating pocket groove. Just past the four-minute mark, one of Knudsen’s most choice guitar licks rings out, and one can’t help but smile upon hearing it.

“Malaika” demonstrates a natural psychedelia, a feeling of mind exploration that’s not schmaltzy or forced. “When we did the very first two rehearsals of ‘Malaika’” Jens writes, “we tried it with a straight up disco beat but also with a 'Higher Ground'-like funk shuffle. None of them really worked, so I suggested the idea of turning the tempo down 30 bpm and making it into a kind of G-funk track for the first part merging into afro-beat on the last part. Niclas came up with the talk-box and the little catchy afro-funk riffs, Louis provided the bass, Emil the drums and in the end it became something entirely different than originally intended, which I think is the magic of working collectively.”

On his “anagram” remix of “Malaika”, the New York City-based producer (and co-founder of The Rust Music) MALAKAI picks up on the psychedelia and delivers a digitized, spaced-out reimagining. The swing and hip-hop influence in MALAKAI’s drum pattern is a nice change of pace among the EP’s galloping afrobeat style. The “Cape Star” remix from fellow Danish producer Bwoy De Bhajan is the sleeper song on Mama Ngoma. If you’re not actively listening to it, the striking minimalist beauty may pass over your head. But get cued in for this cut, and you’ll find yourself immersed in a refreshing psychological swim across the meditative musical spaces that Bwoy de Bhajan creates. “I find it very enjoyable when the personality of the individual remixing is clearly present in the remix,” Mikael writes “I think both remixes share that quality.”

By bridging gaps across geography, time and style, Kalaha continues to make the music of the future in the present. The band’s own future includes a full-length release in 2019 titled Mandala, to which Jens calls Mama Ngoma a “prologue”. If you enjoy the vibe of Mama Ngoma, you already know to stay chooned until then.

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