- Maara's debut LP carries on her sensuous world-building, swapping prog and trance for downtempo and drum & bass.
- It's hard to believe that Montrealer Maara-Louisa Dunbar's first record as Maara came out in 2021, or that she had never DJed before the pandemic. But since bursting out of the Covid doldrums, she's toured both hemispheres, played Boiler Room and released a series of 12-inches that established her as a leading force reimagining trance and prog music as sites of queer utopia. In that short time, she's created something like a miniature universe with an arsenal of didgeridoo-style basslines, progressive melodies, gated vocal samples and track titles that feature a rotating cast of characters and references. The Ancient Truth, her debut LP, is both a continuation of the Maara cosmology and a departure from it. Dunbar trades the flamboyant sensuality of trance for the whispered intimacies of downtempo and drum & bass.
Across her previous releases, Dunbar created a signature eroticism with occasionally NSFW (or at least, not safe for the shared Thanksgiving playlist) vocal samples. On The Ancient Truth, Dunbar makes this sexuality even more explicit at these slower tempos as her breathy vocals ooze across tracks like "Erotics of Betrayal": "It's like I want more that I never get enough / It's never enough." Dunbar moves from the dark room to the bedroom without giving up any of her trademark hedonism. On tracks like "Sip From My Chalice" or "The Ancient Truth," she channels '90s labels like Planet Dog or Fax +49-69/450464, with sound design that comes off both sensuous and silly, her sighs duetting with sitars and other hints of New Age kitsch.
The Ancient Truth, though, isn't all slowed seduction. Dunbar turns up the heat with some drum & bass tracks that touch on the hazy atmospherics pioneered by Photek and her own post-progressive tribal pastiche. On "Yearning," she starts in half-time before the break kicks in. But even when the beat drops, it's all gooey and porous, hard to tell where one melody ends and another begins. Things are even fuzzier on the album's strangest track, "Insidious Force." Jumping between time signatures, the vocal repeats, "There's Nowhere To Hide" as a livewire synth modulates in the background like a loose electric wire snaking across the pavement.
The Ancient Truth is a blank canvas for Dunbar to explore new genres and tempos. At 105 BPM, "Erotics Of Betrayal" is a Lena Wilikens-style cut replete with strange sunbursts of saxophone. "Rough 'n' Ready" also goes low-and-slow, but instead of the Düsseldorf drug chug, it's got the percussive force of a TraTraTrax or Toumba release. If Dunbar had mastered the intricacies of trance and prog on her previous releases, this album finds new ways for her to explore her love of '90s nostalgia and queer futurism across a broader range of styles and genres. The Ancient Truth solidifies Dunbar's singularity, making the forbidden fruit of her musical Eden all the more delectable.
Tracklist01. Sip From My Chalice
02. Nothing Sacred
03. Yearning
04. Erotics Of Betrayal
05. Rough N' Ready
06. The Ancient Truth
07. Just Give Me Time
08. Insidious Force
09. Oh I Remember...
10. Awaken, Plum Plum
11. Sapphic Rehabilitation Center
12. Surrender