Mai Mai Mai - Echoes of the Harvest (Maple Death) [Fourth World]

Mai Mai Mai is the uncompromising musical project of Rome's Toni Cutrone, a shadowy multi-instrumentalist and producer working, brooding, growling and shouting in the Fourth World shadows. The project bridged the gap between ancient, trampled upon folkloric sounds and industrial and experimental electronic music, to create a fitting soundtrack for this grab all you can age of late stage capitalism and Anthropocene acceleration. Wisely he's teamed up with Bologna's equally obstinate, TSMM approved Maple Death Records to tell this particular story.

Cutrone is a sonic and social adventurer, who I imagine finds himself in all sorts of unusual places, but a six week artistic residence in Palestine, splitting his time between Bethlehem and Ramallah during the Gazan genocide I guess ranked as one of the more unusual, and I imagine the most poignant. This was also the period where most of this album was recorded, and where the variously beautiful, evocative and gut wrenching vocals came from.

During his time in Palestine he met with local musicians, dug deep into the local archives and soaked up the vibrations from this historic and troubled land; the six week spell long enough for him to survey the cultural and social landscape, and weave its fabric into his musical vision. Understandably, with the region's history and shocking present, this is not the easiest of listens, but it's far from difficult, in fact with his close proximity to this century's greatest humanitarian horror, surprisingly so.

The album starts with a whisper carried on an ambient breeze before the voice suddenly erupts into layered prayers that ooze Middle Eastern soul; the wooden percussion keeping time as thunder rolls in from Israel's military bases, and the machine breeze turns into swirling gusts. Hand played percussion from Jihad Shouibi gets the album's title track moving, a rumble of heavy armour and infrastructure destroying heavy machinery in the distance, as the muted beats ape the sound of falling munitions, but amongst the shadows the stoic local musicians keep playing, and Shouibi is joined by the sounds of Karam Fares on buzuq, the two hundred year old lute a frequency of reason amongst the intensifying beats and audible unease.

And breathe (a little), "Echoes of Harvest" is here, and rather surprisingly so is Alabaster DaPlume's saxophone playing - the jazz light was also in Palestine at the Sound Of Places residency in the Cremisan Valley, and the experience brought out the best in him. Here he digs deep into the the local wells of pain to fuel his personal cry for justice and peace, jostling with the organ refrain, obscuring the sound archive vocal sample and riding the track's ebb and flow. Ritual, hand played percussion signals the arrival of "Old Poem Made of Sand", another choice archival vocal sample wailing in the background as the synths tones gingerly infiltrate the low lit tribal soundscape.

"Dawn of the Cremisan Valley" starts relatively brightly with Julmud's autotuned vocals nodding to popular music in the dark, beat pulsing shadows that are anything but popular. "Jinn of the Bethlehem Souk" makes no secret of it's experimental intensions, quivering distortion immediately making it's presence known before morphing into a throb, the field recordings from the Bethlehem Souk vying for business but, despite their best efforts, ultimately shouted over by the rising waves of noise and a mid-track, dark, leftfield techno eruption.

There's a lot to absorb during this excursion amongst the Fourth World and it's forgotten people, so fittingly the closing track encourages a moment of reflection. "Wandering Through the Crowded Paths of Al-Hisba" dials down the intensity; spoken and sung vocals harmonise, synths are turned down from eleven to one to restore ambient sanity, as the street noise of this ancient place and hardy race, bravely get on with their daily lives in the face of unimaginable hardship

This album is an uneasy, but compelling musical statement that unavoidably touches on one of history's modern horrors that unfolded before our eyes, but it's also a love story to a people and a place. 

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Playlist Companion

Find Mai Mai Mai in the Slow Jazz Playlist.