Written by Louis Pelingen Starting around 2019 and onwards, no one is putting in the amount of output that Noa Mal has churned out year after year. In other parts of the world, there are a lot of artists like Noa Mal wherein they’re getting a widespread reputation due to how many projects they can consistently release – think King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Viper, and the smattering of obscure electronic, folk, and black metal acts that have that artistic capacity to just brute force their way into a year with 3 or more projects done – looking into the local scene, there is no one like Noa Mal at this current moment. And despite carrying that sort of reputation might be interesting and outstanding to some, that can also be the kind of title that can get frustrating and lead to bigger expectations. Mostly because, with that brand of ‘quantity over quality’ release cycle being stretched over in the consecutive years, the worries surrounding sonic and thematic retreads; lack of surprises in the formula; and meager interest towards improvements across the board will come up more and can lead to going through that kind of discography to be daunting and may end up being less interesting when those boxes are ticked off. Now, after going through Noa Mal’s entire discography, the results can be a mixed blessing. While her brand of lo-fi grunge rock and slowcore comfort zone definitely mesh together easily – her gloomy topicality surrounding relationships and personal angst starts to get extremely thin due to her plain way of writing as well as persistent mixing and mastering issues that doesn’t allow the recordings to blend altogether – there are projects that do show her improving on the composition and production front. ‘Everything Is Science, Baby’ is a good starting point as it best represents Noa Mal’s sound across the board, which you can then follow up on her other 2022 released records like ‘My Corrupted Hard Drive’ that leans on the softer grunge and slowcore cuts and ‘Fear Fiction’ for some synth implementations that she’d eventually explore even further just this year with ‘Suspended Animation’. Going through with her tradition, ‘The Anatomy of Emotional Hijacking’ is her 3rd record that she released this 2023, just after the volume and banger heavy ‘Holy Hour’ and the synthetic drum and synth-inflected ‘Suspended Animation’. It continues to retain Noa Mal’s compositional strengths on the record, from the moody drenched ‘The Actress’ where Noa Mal’s prim vocal lines work well with the wavering guitar licks and percussion beats, the trudging indie rock of ‘Luci’ and ‘Deeply Tinted Glasses’ as the former staggers through due to the quicker flash of melodies alongside these carefree vocal lines and the latter coasts through grungier guitar lines that adds into the smoked out vibe of the track, the sunnier indie rock of ‘Dance For Me, Puppet!’ with the gliding vocal melodies amidst the stable fuzzy drums and brighter guitar lines, and the tempered acoustics of ‘Sepanx ka nanaman’ that brings an open space away from the numbness of the moment. As said before, with her writing surrounding numbing cycles of relationships and personal angst that has gotten stale that doesn’t give her a lot of favors at this point, the writing this time opens up Noa Mal’s writing scope as there are a couple of songs that provide more context towards the relationship that eventually fluctuates before it even started. The universal sorrow of ‘Luci’ that tackles the loss of everything and everyone as well as the social exhaustion of Noa Mal’s generation represented through Luci is an example of this that continues further with ‘Dance for me, Puppet!’ through the puppet metaphors as well as the glancing subtext of familial disappointment on certain tracks like ‘Intro: Hijacked’, ‘My Golden Town’, and ‘Sepanx Ka Nanaman’. These moments do add more to Noa Mal’s dulled-out relationship throughout the record like the tiring cycles of everyone showing her how to love on ‘The Actress’ which eventually colors how the numbness that she feels creates a different tone to the “love songs” of ‘The One Who Really…’ and ‘My Golden Town’. Songs may have this emotionally intimate tone to them, but given the context of social exhaustion from her peers and the personal dullness from all the cycling relationships, it’s now put into darker framing wherein Noa’s numbness has now bordered into irrationality, making the relationship an emotional hijacking that she eventually disposes away on ‘Sepanx Ka Nanaman’ and eventually succumbs to more layers of numbness that makes her feel free at the very end. Despite the strengths that Noa Mal has honed in on this record, the mixing of the record does get a bit uneven, more so the guitars and drums that do peak on the mix. While this issue does permeate on her 1st 2023 record, ‘Holy Hour’, it is at least consistent in terms of how loud it can be that does get compensated with punchy grunge melodies just flooding through and through, while ‘The Anatomy of Emotional Hijacking’ takes those grunge melodies with a sunny like flair that does need more balance on the mix. And despite her writing that does work a lot more in this record, it did stumble on ‘Angel of Romantic Death’ with the plainspoken metaphors that may show Noa Mal’s agency but just ends up being clunky as a result. But overall, ‘The Anatomy of Emotional Hijacking’ might not feel special in Noa Mal’s ever-growing discography at first glance even if the composition still does come off as developed, the writing and emotional throughline on the relationship Noa Mal is presenting here offers a different layer and side of her style and framing thus far. A lot more tangled and is paired with an extra set of context around it that does broaden Noa Mal’s skill as a writer given her plain style of writing hasn’t stuck out much in her past records. It’s very
Tag: Dream pop
TRCK REVIEW: girlcharmm – infatuation
Written by Louis Pelingen The ongoing output of this dream pop sapphic band girlcharmm aims to deliver letters for the heartbroken group of sapphic lovers in the Philippines. Their second single, ‘infatuation’, is a letter for those who yearn for that desired love, only to unveil the heartbreak within as the process of recovering soon comes after. It’s a message that’s delivered with a direct and conflicting scope, where Darl Alba’s sweet vocals are surrounded by Anna Gella’s layers of fuzzy drum machines and layers of synths both blaring and floating as well as Kaya Katigbak’s chunky guitar riffs flooding in. There is intent in that hemmed-in production as the melodies keep rambling around the instrumentation in a free-flowing way – clearly purposeful in order to encapsulate that exhausting thought process of that sad realization that is way too sudden for a lot of sapphic individuals to eventually figure out on their own. As much as a lot of the elements from the melodies and the production clearly hit home what the track is going for, it also makes it tough to get back into due to the rambling motion of the melodies and the feverish fog of the production. It doesn’t take away from the track’s quality, however, as it never shies away from revealing how tiring the process of going through that bitter phase of infatuation is. Clearly, what’s important to take note of here is that girlcharmm delivers what needs to be delivered, embracing sapphic relationships in the local music scene that will resonate a lot with a sapphic audience that has their broken hearts still in healing. Support the art & the artist:
TRACK REVIEW: Angelo Shinohara – sayo
Written by Elijah P. Angelo Shinohara’s TikTok account is nothing but your typical “pogi cover” singer-songwriter. Cherry picking the latest alternative in the musicsphere and earning 6-digit views day in and day out, Shinohara in the light is the cliche viral artist, but in the dark, he’s different. Enter the shoegaze/dreampop version of Angelo Shinohara: the noisier, vocal fronted and fuzz-drenched pretty face side of the singer-songwriter. The ambient slowcore to quietgaze pipeline is evident in acts like Title Fight, Whirr and Starflyer 59, but Shinohara doesn’t make himself a copycat of either of the aforementioned bands, but rather a painfully shameless second-version of his inspirations. The influences have depth, grit, and an overarching narrative between the noise. Shinohara has neither. “sayo” is touted as the viral shoegaze love song of the rainy season. Shinohara and friends are saluting to their shoegaze idols heavily, both sonically and lyrically. “sayo” is arguably the first ever shoegaze track that draws on so many influences but the result of which becomes a blank canvas of ideas for Shinohara. And as much as the track is an exploration of soundscapes for the songwriter, the sound and writing barely carried the track in its dragging 4-minute runtime. The longer “sayo” lasts, the more it proves to be a one-dimensional hugot track amplified by muffled distortion. In repeated listens, the track magnifies in substandard production textures. “sayo” and its perfumed pedalboard doesn’t make it any better and neither does Angelo’s Greg Gonzales-esque voice and chiseled jawline doesn’t make this any more tolerable. Angelo Shinohara is a walking-singing example of a bedroom artist releasing a demo that has multiple errors than the average trials of a bedroom-shoegaze artist. Support the art & the artist: