Maserati, ‘Maserati VII’
Knotty, dance-oriented post-rock instrumentals, but there’s so much more tension in a Maserati song than most dance music
Maserati’s first album since Jerry Fuchs’ tragic elevator shaft fall builds on the late drummer’s legacy. When Fuchs joined the Athens, GA quartet in 2005 he pushed Maserati away from their knotty post-rock instrumentals into a dance-oriented direction that still honored the group’s penchant for deep mutating structures. Mike Albanese has replaced Fuchs, but the aesthetic is still going strong, blending spacey rave-ilicious psychedelic jams and cascading club-ready rhythms. The drum-centric mix ensures the driving backbeat straddles the double-yellow line, but there’s a math rock intricacy to these spiraling guitar jams as keyboard washes cycle past like time-lapse images from Koyaanisqatsi.