Maki – “Polypropylene” – TunedLoud Hit Radio

Maki, the man behind the epically intriguing album, ‘Waking Up With The World On Fire’, formulates an intriguing symbiosis between New Age musicality, Darkwave and world-music influences, cinematic musings, and mythical meditations. His music is beautifully crafted, fully emotional, spiritually entrancing, intimately moving, seducing, majestic, enveloping and alluring. On the album, varying exotic ambiences meet upward melodious lines and kinetically pulsating percussion, while wordless vocal interludes and chants twist and turn their way around the arrangements. Maki has the workings of a mastermind. Little is known about him, other than the fact that he started his musical journey in smoky bars and bowling alleys delivering rock, jazz, country, folk offerings. At different times in his life he was a university artist-in-residence, aerospace geekoid, VW/VR research department developer, filmmaker, art director, and sculptor. At one point he sold all his music instruments, studio gear, everything, and gave away the rest. Only to be bitten by the musical bug again on receiving a guitar as a gift. Maki can, however, produce stunning pieces of music when he put his mind to it.

And he put his mind to it, on ‘Waking Up With The World On Fire’. The album does not lack of diversity and dynamics that will without any doubt maintain the attention of the listener. Where it will lead you, is another question, and depends largely on your own personal interpretative skills and mindset.

As a result, this music is absorbing, delicately dark, and ravishingly soothing. Right from the opening track, “Polypropylene” there is an underlying energy running through the arrangements, an energy that is maneuvered and molded into a variety of currents and streams without ever being unnecessarily unleashed.

On “Nylon” a deep bending groove rises, surfacing and then crystallizing into shards of exotic sound. The musical style appears to be moving and absorbing, with a large use of aural synthesized ambiences mixed with a hypnotic pulsating mood.

The listener will be seduced by deeply moving, cinematic and darkly enveloping percussive soundscapes on “Xylene”. The sound aesthetic develops a melodiously evocative direction where detached string ensembles meet introspective minimalist sequences, aquatic synthscapes, and eerie vocal reverbs.

Plenty of moods, variations, vocal sound colors, and timbral exploration make “Polyvinyl” and “Acrylic” worth the discovery. Musically speaking the music on “Methylene” has a very cosmically-infused up-tempo ambient feel. The soundscape is constantly imaginative, chilling and even slightly menacing, mainly articulated on a darkly moving melody.

Simmering emotive layers and vocal sheets are elevated on “Zephylin”—a very slow beating tranquilizer that is just as impacting as its counterparts with its well-balanced sojourn through sublime choral and cinematic realms.

The continuous sound forms and sustained enveloping textures of this album seem to follow the metaphor of a sovereign spiritualized nature whose life is moved by cycles and engaged in perpetual movements. It moves somewhere in the spectrum of conceptual contemporary music in the spiritual direction.

Resulting in a reflective, cerebral and moodily introspective travel through mystical elements and atmospheres of deep contemplation. Gorgeously arranged musical themes are decorated with all sorts of unusual ethnic bits and pieces as intricate maneuvers are handled with aplomb.

Ultimately ‘Waking Up With The World On Fire’ is seven tracks of layered mysticism, harmonic resonance, and foundational orchestration that evokes a human expression of awe-inspiring vastness which stretches the very fabric of imagination. Maki’s portfolio of film, music and sculpture is published and distributed by the Natalis Group.

Album Liner Notes: “What makes ‘Waking Up With The World On Fire’ more unique is it abandons known human language, replacing the human voice as a mystical, lyrical conte’ drawn against ancient rhythms and night dreams. It took years to seek, refine, and coalesce the signature vocals. This album is sequenced start to finish for a specific emotional effect. Likewise, Fans can rearrange the songs to achieve different psychological outcomes. As chapters of a book, the music can end just as happy or just as devastating as the listener wants it to go. If all you want is happy endings, your album will be shorter. The same goes for the darker choice. The wise choice is to achieve balance.”