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Antics In A Maze

by Haq

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Walter Fini
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Walter Fini Well, this album it’s the most interesting music that I have listened in many years. Maybe it’s something personal, but this Mini album it’s a real gemm..... to listen, and listen and again listen .... Bravo 👏🏻 👏🏻👏🏻
Walter Fini
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1.
Antics In A Maze 04:48
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2.
Norvell 05:15
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3.
Jikan Ga Nai (Utu Lautturi Remix) 03:49
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4.
Are You The Elephant Factory? (Senji Niban Remix) 05:11
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5.
Bees In My Feet (Autumna Remix) 03:47
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about

Haq - "Antics In A Maze" (BS041)



Written, recorded and produced by Haq

Haq are: N-qia (Nozomi & Takma aka Serph) & Harold Nono



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Haq - “Antics In A Maze” (BS041)

Deepest apologies to the Bearsuit Records folk for not coming through with the promised mentions of late, I feel particularly bad given the fact that Alex Bearsuit has been very supportive with messages and advise with regard to my ongoing health woes. So it’s with a degree of good fortune and coincidence that a new Haq EP shuffles its way past our listening desk.

Of course in no need of introductions here, Haq feature the combined talents of Harold Nono and N-qia, found here captured across a quintet of strangely alluring tracks (gathered together as the ‘Antics in a Maze’ EP) whose sum parts compress a joyous distillation of flirting chamber arrangements, trip hop-ula electronics and skewed rhythmic gyrations which in many respects may well collectively be their most pop orientated outing to date. To set some kind of reference markers, there’s much here to appeal to those fully versed in the late 90’s era happenings of say, Cornelius and Takako Minekawa, to these add a smidgeon of Momus and a liberal dose of the Caretaker with perhaps a tasting of Pop off Tuesday. In truth armed with these as a rough guide, you’d still be no nearer pinning down a satisfiable description of Haq, they just freefall and cross weave symphonic collages of sheer ethereal beauty.

Opening title track ‘Antics in a maze’ is pure Bearsuit kookiness that’s awash in hiccupping arrangements, dancing ghost lights and wonky enchantment, in truth not so dissimilar to the more lighter tones of Quimper as though impishly remixed by Midwich Youth Club. ‘Norvell’ on the other hand is quite something else, once escaped of the ghostly noir strings and the accompanying dream drizzled mourn, something utterly beguiling and beautiful emerges with the advance of swathes of baroque orchestrations – all very early 80’s Nyman-esque. As to the remaining three tracks, these are given over to remixes with Utu Lautturi’s interpretation of ‘Jikan Ga Nai’ best described as playfully pickled with Senji Niban’s reenactment of ‘are you the elephant factory’ sweetly hazed in a joyous senses overriding toys after dark parade whilst leaving an adorably dreamy Autumna rephrasing of ‘bees in my feet’ to arrest and seduce with its vapor whispered ghosting.

Mark Barton - The Sunday Experience / Losing Today
marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/haq/

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Haq - “Antics In A Maze” (BS041)

The Bearsuit philosophy is, to the best of my understanding, essentially built round a l’aissez-faire approach to experimentalism and collaboration. Stuff happens, when it happens, as it happens. Sometimes it happens without input or collaboration. And it’s all fine as long as it’s not mainstream. Truth is, nothing any of the Bearsuit acts could produce in a million lifetimes would ever even hint at mainstream aspirations. The reason I’ve been a personal advocate of the label and its output for a while now is simply because they do what they so, and don’t give a crap about trends, commercialism, or anything else. As I wrote the other day, albeit in a slightly different context: it’s for the love, not the money.

The label’s latest release sees Haq (the alter-ego of another Bearsuit would-be legend, Harold Nono) return. Five years on from the ‘Nocturnals’ album, this EP offers three remixes from the album, plus two new cuts.

Lead track ‘Antics in a Maze’ moves far beyond the avant-trip-hop leanings of its predecessor and froths with fanciful flights of incongruity, and brims with an air of otherness. Breathy vocals waft over drifting, trilling swathes of gauze-like synth, crossed with bursts of odd electronica, deep dub and driving drum ‘n’ bass. Warped snippets of thee tunes for fictional TV shows and films from the 70s and 80s emerge fleetingly for the ever-shifting compositional aneurysm.

‘Norvell’ is the second new cut: with sonorous, brooding synths and rich, layered strings that sweep and tug at the tear ducts, as well as percussion that simultaneously clatters and thunders, it’s a dissonant and haunting work that straddles industrial, goth and shoegaze, with hints of Cranes and a messed-up air of dark beauty about its detached, haunting evocativeness.

The remixes are varied, in terms of style, interest and significance – but at least they are varied. Senji Niban’s remix of ‘Are You the Elephant’ thumps along insistently, a far cry from the slightly eerie, chilled original, while The Autumna remix of ‘Bees in My Feet’ is but a humming drone that’s elevated above ambience by virtue of maintaining a pitch that’s impossible to ignore, however hard you may try.

There’s nothing ordinary about the music on this EP, and while it’s bewildering at times – as you’d reasonably expect from Bearsuit – it also contains moments of extreme elegance and grace which are spellbinding.

[Christopher Nosnibor - Aural Aggravation]
auralaggravation.com/2018/08/08/haq-antics-in-a-maze-ep/

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Well, this album - it’s the most interesting music that I have listened [to] in many years. Maybe it’s something personal but this mini album it’s a real gem..... to listen and listen and again listen .... Bravo 👏🏻 👏🏻👏🏻
[Walter Fini]

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credits

released July 14, 2018

Copyright © 2018 Bearsuit Records, ℗ 2018 Bearsuit Records

Cover photo : Fruitcharge Nielsen

contact :
bearsuitrecords@hotmail.co.uk
N-qia : concentrationtn@gmail.com
Harold Nono : nono.harold@gmail.com

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haroldnono.bandcamp.com

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Bearsuit Records Scotland, UK

Bearsuit Records: independent label based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Artists include :
Bunny & The Invalid Singers / Harold Nono / Ippu Mitsui / Eamon The Destroyer / Haq / Annie & The Station Orchestra / AWSTS / Ageing Children / Senji Niban / Jikan Ga Nai / Whizz Kid / Andrei Rikichi / The Moth Poets..

contact :
bearsuitrecords@hotmail.co.uk

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