Maral’s music doubles as a means of fantastic transport. Soldered together from elements of dub, industrial, and anarcho-punk, it reflects both 1970s Jamaica and 1980s London, but the Los Angeles musician’s work draws most of its spiritual sustenance from Iran. For a decade now, Maral has been assembling a library of samples of Iranian folk, classical, and pop music. Her source material has come from far and wide: specialty record stores in L.A.’s Persian Square; her parents’ cassette collections; and trips to the homeland itself. From her childhood until her early twenties, the Virginia native regularly visited Iran with her family, soaking up the language, culture, and music. In the early 2010s, DJing around L.A., she began layering those samples over blown-out beats inspired by moombahton and Jersey club. By her landmark 2018 mixtape Voices From the Land of Iran, her style had crystallized, and she continued to develop it across wide-ranging mixes and original productions. She likened her debut album, 2019’s Mahur Club, to the memory of a trip overseas: “I wanted the release to feel like you are in a taxi in Iran with the windows down and the taxi driver is playing an old cassette and the sounds from outside are mixing in to create a whole new song.”
If Maral’s previous albums were diesel beaters zigzagging through crowded city streets, Ground Groove is a high-powered all-terrain vehicle putting its suspension to the test. Her third album follows the hybrid template of its predecessors, but the beats are more rugged, the range more adventurous. Distortion has always played a key role in her music, but it has never sung in quite the way it does here. She wreathes electronic percussion in fuzz, sculpting overdriven 808 kicks into ominously throbbing bass ostinatos; she drenches guitars in the no-nonsense scuzz of bands like Crass, a longtime favorite. Her grooves are indebted to dub reggae, and she balances terse electronic beats with loose, muscular drumming on an acoustic kit that lends a live, jammy feel to her rhythms. There’s something fundamentally Californian about the blend; “That’s Okay, Ruin It” sounds like a garage band navigating dub and stoner metal in an empty swimming pool.
It’s a short album, covering 11 tracks in just half an hour, and it doesn’t vary much in tone or mood: Most songs use the same sludgy bass and bone-dry drums. But the short track lengths work in the record’s favor. The songs are all clearly cut from the same cloth, yet they’re just different enough to catch the ear, one after the next. It’s not always obvious where one track ends and another begins, and some, like the twisting “Mari’s Groove,” blow through numerous contrasting passages in just two or three minutes. If the sullen atmospheres keep you locked into Ground Groove’s labyrinthine confines, then the sudden glimmers of light make you forget about looking for a way out.
Read More: Maral: Ground Groove Album Review