Introducing the fuzziest new act on the Merseyside scene, Getintothis‘ Nick Lodge checks out Queen Maud as they come into focus.
On Queen Maud’s bandcamp site their title font is fuzzy, indistinct, but far from abstract. So too their music.
Like many new bands Queen Maud refuse to be pigeonholed, musical magpies refusing to be pinned down by old-fashioned definitions, with elements of dreampop, electronica, white noise, funk, found sounds, edgy guitar scrapings.
They take a simple melody, and embellish with whatever’s at their fingertips, which, if they happen to have a half-decent computer, is quite a lot. Experimental music used to be a euphemism for stuff that would not just annoy but baffle parents, and appealed to cooler-than-thou older brothers. Now people experiment because technology lets them, not to challenge the increasingly-irrelevant charts. Bit of brass? Press that button there. A bagpipe solo? Those buttons there. The result here is songs that are, well, fuzzy, indistinct, still coming into focus. Vocally and lyrically they can sound earnest, serious – although I guess with two EPs entitled Pains and Bodies that’s perhaps not surprising. But they do have the beginnings of their own sound, amidst the plethora of influences and options available to them – insistent, repetitive guitar lines threaded through layer upon layer of atmospheric, other-worldly sounds, strained vocals.
They may be occasionally noodling, occasionally a little dour, but they’re also occasionally euphoric, and even funky. If they sharpen up a little, taking these bedroom symphonies to a wider live audience is more than a distinct possibility.
