CCMusic.com

• Track Listing

It's been 30 minutes now or so that the Franco-Scottish trio Maestro have been on stage depicting all the shades of mourning times, waves of reconciliation, reassurance, and anger. Their second album, Monkey Business, is an attempt to understand why these things happen over and over. Why can love be so cold-hearted and why does the harmony between two people run dry? An ever-recurring question, when and why do these cracks happen? When do two humans become strangers all of a sudden? Since no one has found an answer yet, do we have to scream and create music and words? No, well, not everyone should. But there's no doubt this band can and wants to. So you are here staring at Maestro and by the end of the show there's a dance that seems to have been present from the beginning. Still following? Suddenly all the rage makes sense because good old England has invented an angry idea that is called pop. Maestro navigate through the oddest extremes of pop with a punk deviance. From off-kilter Arabic synth riffs ("Should I"), to an unexpected perverted quirky trap ("Dirty Bitch"). It's not surprising the Scottish man is in charge of the words and singing - even if Scotland was about to leave this old England... They are cooking a similar soup, but this is not the same old cup of tea folks... Maestro are sucking the blood of a vivid European vein, shamelessly classical but at the same time redefining conventional structures (like on the baroque song "Skyman" and it's detached whisperings, "... shit happens... ") Within the experimental sophisticated arrangements lie some of the sweetest melodies ("Sweet Talk", "K.I.M"), and a lonesome spine-tickling moment thanks to the climatic waltz "Yes Today". Maestro are direct, sharp, and acidic, barbaric and virtuoso, their music is ultimately enlightened by a magical combination of electronic textures present within their driven, pure, and provocative music. But their deconstructed sound never loses it's harmonic motive. Here and there broken hymns appear and peel themselves out of 30 years of club history. It feels like there is a certain necessity for mass hysteria in this music.