The third single of 2022 from the Manchester improvisos is another odyssey of mood-shifting jazz-punk delights.

Words: Elvis Thirlwell

Maruja. What is it? What does it mean? One minute weapons-grade bass is eviscerating your ears and saxophone is punching holes in your stomach-sack. Vocalist Harry Wilkinson is screaming of thunder in the skies, and everything’s fucked-up hellfire. Next, you’re floating in a cosmo-jazz vacuum that carries all the stillness of an abandoned battleground, wobbling through tremolo and soaking up the sensualities.

With a sound that’s founded on incessant band improvisations, the four-piece have developed a healthy skill of knitting the best bits from their hundreds of jams into sprawling, protean sagas like these. A fusion, an excitement, and an immediacy, Maruja make it their business to catch the moment, lay their grubby hands on the thresholds of time and rip holes into futures.

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