Words by Jason Lee
If you’ve been waiting for the next apocalyptically-themed yet overall uplifting and even blissed-out at times Sufi-gaze album to hit the shelves that “delves into the ruins of a civilization haunted by the ghosts of its past, a society once vibrant and alive, now reduced to a somber reflection of its former self” while exploring the fundamental question, “Can one still nurture hope and love in their hearts amidst such overwhelming despair?” made up of B-sides, outtakes, and remixes yet seamlessly wedded into a coherent album then look no further than Minaxi’s fourth full-length which just dropped with a title sure to make both Billy Corgan and Fiona Apple jealous namely The Reverberating Sound of an Absent Metropolis…
…which if ordered in physical form off from Minoxi’s Bandcamp arrives with “a 40-page zine detail[ing] the narrative of the album through prose and poetry in English and Hindi [with] each song treated as a chapter, an essential puzzle piece adding to the overall listening experience of the album” as all albums should I’m thinking now (c’mon, other bands, bring it!) so we’ll leave that level of exegesis to the experts and share our more modest general impressions below…
…and what do we mean by Sufi-gaze you may ask yourself well naturally it’s one of shoegaze’s 21st-century offshoots like nü gaze, blackgaze, stonergaze, doomgaze, bro-countrygaze, Tik-Tok-gaze, fuzzy-slippers-gaze and so on (we only made a few of those up) with Sufi-gaze in particular fusing elements of Sufi music with Indian classical music, Hindustani pop, psychedelia, shoegaze, dreampop and Pakistani rock which when you think about it it makes complete sense…
…cuz while people quite rightly cite the Velvet Underground as progenitors of all things “gaze” they far less often trace the sound back to its original source namely the shimmery drone that’s nearly omnipresent in Indian Hindustani and Karnatic classical music (the very music that inspired John Cale‘s insertion of mystically tinged droney electra viola into the Velvets’ mix of proto-dreampop and dissonance) a.k.a. “shruti,” played on a dedicated instrument like the tanpura with its buzzing clusters of resonant overtones meant to orient the melodic and percussive soloists with a shimmering wash of pure sound (Ohm) that anticipated shoegaze by a few millennia…
…with Minaxi’s Mumbai-by-way-of-Brooklyn guitarist/composer/producer/co-vocalist Shrenik Ganatra bringing shoegaze full-circle and as you may expect from an album named The Reverberating Sound of an Absent Metropolis the opening track (“It’s Got Me Again”) slowly fades in on a desolate landscape aprés le delüge in the form of a metallic sounding drone and some contemplative Floyd-esque guitar and Liam Christian delivering the opening lines “there’s love in my eyes / watching you garden” which serves as a handy reminder that anyone who survives the coming end times will surely be doing a lot of gardening set against a latticework of dream-poppy arpeggiations soon joined by flangy chords that shimmer and scrape in equal measure like Minaxi strung their instruments with razor wire or something…
…which reminds me of a video I came across recently where this kid describes shoegaze as “noise rock for softies” which isn’t exactly wrong cuz you’re not gonna hear lyrics like “placing lilies down in a heart shape / for when you turn around” in a Slayer song but Minaxi pull it off beautifully and on an album about the end of the world no less with Liam repeating “it’s got me courageous” then soaring wordlessly off into the sunset set against a vista of cascading waves of guitar distortion…
…and heck that’s just the first of TRSOAAM’s eight tracks with the next one “Jaan (Sufi Rock Version)”starting off sounding like an outtake from Radiohead’s In Rainbows but then gradually draping layer after layer of sonic textures over the motorik drums/chiming guitar until its an entirely new beast with cascading tabla rhythms, waves of reverberating voices and guitars and what sounds like maybe some harmonium buried in there too (another hypnotically drone-esque South Asian instrument that’s ideally suited to shoegaze) not to mention some sweet bass licks played high on the neck and then there’s the album-closing drum and bass remix of “Jaan” which sounds like an entirely different song altogether fitting we suppose for a song whose title is the “Hindi word meaning ‘life’ or ‘loved one’ alluding, in the context of the song, to the higher power and its various forms”…
…so you can see this album ain’t afraid of addressing weighty topics which is another fairly metal quality about it not to mention lines describing a world “in the wrath of fire and smoke“ where you “hear the screams, feel the uproar” all while “search[ing] for love in this hell” (lyrics from “Jaan” translated from the Hindi) which the narrator seems to find in the next couple tracks both of which wax Rumi-like lyrical on the topic of being lost in a blissful state of ardor that is until track five, “Why Am I Surprised?” (again sung by Liam) which deals with “two lovers in need of somebody new to hold” and hey it’s good to know even in the post-apocalypse wasteland we’ll continue suffering/savoring the slings and arrows of romantic intrigue with other remaining human beings…
…but these aren’t just love songs, they’re LOVE SONGS, in the widescreen Cinemascope sense of love as a form of religious devotion sought against a backdrop of a fast-collapsing world which surely does call for “lullabies for the shattered minds” (“Carnivore – Live Ambient Version“) and with the stakes so high that’s how you end up with songs that straddle the line between epic and intimate…
…not to mention oddly hopeful and on that note we’ll close by quoting Shrenik Ganatra’s liner notes for the album and the glimmer of hope provided by “simultaneously showcas[ing] the dark side of humanity and the enduring resilience of the human spirit…suggest[ing] that while humans are responsible for the collapse of society and their habitat throughout history, the empty spaces in these ruins create fertile ground for a glimmer of light; that human experience is cyclical and what has happened before will recur until a different choice is made” cuz really we couldn’t’ve said it better ourselves…
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The Reverberating Sound of an Absent Metropolis…
March 1, 2024 release date.
Original music composed, arranged, performed and produced by Minaxi.
Steve Carlin / drums.
Thomas Herndon / bass.
Liam Christian / guitar and vocals.
Shrenik Ganatra / guitar, harmonium and vocals.
Additional Performances by:
Sunny Jain / drums on song 3.
Milan Ganatra / tabla on songs 2 and 4.
Luke Santy / cello on song 6.
Sean Devare / violin on song 6.
Recorded between August 2021–June 2023 in Brooklyn.
Drums for songs 1 and 2 recorded by Ryan Santos Phillips at Lux Perpetua NYC.
Drums for song 3 recorded by Sunny Jain.
Drums for song 4 recorded by Quinn McCarthy atThe Creamery Studio.
Tabla for song 2 recorded by Milan Ganatra.
Tabla for song 4 recorded by Shrenik Ganatra.
Everything else recorded by Shrenik Ganatra.
Mixed and mastered by Shrenik Ganatra.
Song 8 remixed by Shrenik Ganatra.
Concept, design & creative direction by Shrenik Ganatra.
FROM MINAXI: Massive thank you to all of you who’ve supported the work thus far. Thanks to DKFM, Eardrum Buzz Radio and Rob Pritchard (Radio Free Brooklyn) for spinning the music on the station throughout the release cycle. Go listen to these stations and show them your support for helping independent music reach many ears.
Special thanks to Patrick Hunt for always being there for the band. Big thank you to Bhanuj Kappal and Anurag Tagat for championing the work and Minaxi’s sound.