Givan Lötz - MAW
- Written by Jamie Halliday
Looking at a release like Givan Lötz’s MAW LP, you may find yourself with the feeling that the DIY continent of the Independent Music world was made for an output like this. That Other Electricities, a small one person label from South Florida could find an artist of the quality of Lötz as far afield from Miami as Johannesburg, South Africa, and bring an album as unique and beautifully put together as this, is one the enduring wonders of modern music. These things don’t always make commercial sense but we’re listeners, not shareholders and there can never be enough beautiful weirdness in the world.
Snarling, the previous collaboration between Lötz and Other Electricities, was a dense and wonderfully overwhelming work of note. But it’s with MAW that OE and Lötz appear to have really put everything into the record. This is a dour, sprawling and melodramatic album, it flirts with darkness, perhaps even gothic, but it’s deceptively eclectic and subtly experimental. There’s no wasted motion, you could even call it languid, every sound is weighed and considered. Drifting effortlessly from hushed acoustics of “The Wind” to the agitated crunch heard on “Speak.” There’s no obvious anchoring “buzz track” to help the uninitiated find their footing but everything here absolutely belongs.
For lack of a clear reference point, MAW brings to mind Mount Eerie’s underrated Black Wooden; endless heart expressed through a stony glare. It’s a proposal of marriage at an infant’s funeral. It’s the knowledge that your loved ones are safe as icy water fills your lungs. It’s a record that may feel at home on Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ imprint. Without ever asking for the comparison, Lötz drifts into microscopic doses of Folk, Black Metal, Gothic, Drone, Post-Rock, Ambient and Psychedelia. MAW belongs everywhere and nowhere.
Lötz has always been artist that will alienate or downright irritate many but he also has the potential to be absolutely spellbinding for the right audience. It isn’t a one listen record. It takes time and it takes headphones, but there’s a busy, melancholy world to be found and explored, right here, beneath the fog.