MUGGLE

— First review of this album —

One of the many modern post-rock bands to emerge in China, MUGGLE ( 麻瓜 ) formed in the small town of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province by 刘洋 [Liu Yang] and 张敏 [Zhang Min] and has released several short albums since 2015. This self-titled debut was first released in 2015 digitally but found a home on the Beijing based 1724 label which released it as a CD. Not much is known about this band except that Liu Yang played with 48V in Changsha.

All instrumental, MUGGLE ( 麻瓜 ) delivers a very mellow minimalist style of ambient post-rock that featured serene atmosphere and danceable electronic drumming. Likewise it implements slow echoey guitar effects and creates rather spaced out soundscapes. The tones and timbres are right out of the post-rock playbook and the melodies are fairly simple and repetitive.

This debut release features six tracks and just misses the 30 minute mark. This is a real chill out album and features as much ambient music as it does post-rock. In fact it's basically ambient swirlies layered over basic post-rock motifs that repetitively drift on for several minutes. The production is really well mixed so all the subtle sounds can waft in and out of the breezy delivery system.

While the ambient and post-rock often overlap, the track "X-Change" starts off as a purely ambient style and then slowly morphs into a post-rock motif that adds some cheesy electronic percussive beats, the aspect that diminishes the overall effect of the mellowness. The track features a soundtrack type of orchestration towards its end which sounds like a cello plucking away.

While mostly instrumental the final track "Lotus Valley" features some vocals but i'm not sure if they're in Mandarin Chinese or just wordless utterances. Overall this is a dreamy ethereal album that's warm and cozy. It makes great background music but it's not very engaging really. It's very simplistic and doesn't offer anything beyond pleasant sounds. The has released a few albums since this debut and it seems they have engaged in a consistent style so not really anything i'm overly enthused about.