Listening: Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube (w/visualizations)
Info
Continuing Original Music Week with the first new major original Maxo album since 2017! They actually used to release a whole lot of original music, often in the form of albums, in the 2010s, though that dried up quite a bit after they started writing music for video games in exchange for currency. They still do post original tracks of varying sorts on SoundCloud and such, occasionally releasing them as singles or compilation albums, but this is the first proper album written as an album in a good while.
Tweewaster is generally in a harder electronic style that we see more in the artist’s original works than their soundtrack works, particularly their previous major albums Skyriser and Chordslayer; they said regarding this album that it’s their “own personal version of de- (and re-) constructed club music,” which is why there’s plenty of loud bass and drums and rave voice samples to go around. There’s still plenty of stuff here that you’ll find in elsewhere in their music when they’re not writing club tracks though, like hyperactivity, a dash of cuteness, some time signature shenanigans, random noises, all that good stuff.
Tweewaster’s theme is “growing into yourself,” which you might not be able to get just from the album title but you can definitely see it in track titles like “Body Image” and “Love Thyself.” You can chart a narrative arc through the album: after a calm intro the album starts off with a block of its most aggressive, noisiest pieces, and then at the halfway point it starts pulling out calmer tracks and dance tracks with a little bit more of a positive tone and a little more sustained, less staccato sound design. So I think you could pretty easily read a journey of acceptance into the album’s flow, if you felt like it.
Fun album, definitely nice to see Maxo finding an excuse to cut loose with music like this again.
Recommended tracks:
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“Body Image” has a little speedrun strat for you
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“High Cleric” is the chillest, most ambient track on the album
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“Soft Train” is pretty DnB-y, love the detuned pads and synth solo out of nowhere
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