Mayge Mayge cassette
What excites me about lo-fi music isn’t because I just love it when things sound obscure or chaotic, it takes familiar forms (in this case, new wave-adjacent punk) and brings an impressionist bent to what was otherwise familiar, like looking at a Matisse painting up close and letting it blur into a psychedelic mess. You get the feeling of the song and your mind fills in the blanks. MAYGE uses production as an extension of the songwriting, creating an enjoyable and disorienting EP that sounds anything but familiar. Strange gibbering vocals, melancholy guitar lines, it all works. The covers here are a treat as well, taking an original from TONY MOLINA and morphing it into something barely familiar to fans of the original, likewise with the SCREAMERS’ track “If I Can’t Have What I Want, I Don’t Want Anything.” The originals, however, are what bring me back to this release, biting and squeaking like a little mutant rat gnawing on your eardrums. Sometimes lo-fi production pisses me off, like it’s an affectation. Not the case here by a long shot, so take a listen.