Short Reviews [Malchamech - 2025 - "Beautiful Decay"]

What we have here is an album which sound perfectly fine being released by Iapetus, Moonjune or Cuneiform, as Malchamech are a free improvisational trio comprising Richard Harding (chapman stick), Phil Hargreaves (saxes/flute) and Richard Harrison (drums/objects), who say they approach their music from the genres of classic rock and metal. To my ears we have a drummer and sax player who are from the avant areas of jazz, and a stick player who would be really happy playing distorted sludge or doom. Harrison is a Moon-style maniac who wants to hit everything in sight, preferably very quickly (and has a cow bell), Hargreaves is heavily influenced by Soft Machine and is also fun of very quick runs, while Harding is much more rooted, less playing notes or chords but instead releasing concrete slabs of sound. In many ways, we have three musicians who should not want to be in the same room together, let alone recording music, yet this is their second album and while there is a large part of me which feels this should just not work given the disparate styles there is no doubt there is something here which keeps bringing me back for more. It is far removed from the mainstream, thankfully, with a wall of sound which keeps me intrigued and wanting to discover more. This is music that is deliberately challenging, and the listener needs to cast aside any preconceived ideas before diving in as this is definitely not for the faint hearted but for those of us who are somewhat braver and refuse the norm this is a fascinating release indeed.