Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines

Both installments of Quazarz attest to Shabazz Palaces’ inventiveness and imagination, and reveal new layers upon each listen. After all, creative thinkers like Butler and Maraire often do feel like aliens stuck on earth.

Both albums create worlds unto themselves. The gauzy, sensual Quazarz Vs. The Jealous Machines highlights the duo’s more melodic side, moving from lust and consummation to a film-noir spy flick, pursued by nebulous internet drones.

They [Born On A Gangster Star and Quazarz Vs The Jealous Machines] can be appreciated either together or apart from each other. [Aug 2017, p.58]

The tensions on the second record take on new, fascinating layers as you go back to the perspective laid out on Born on a Gangster Star. The two also clash musically, sometimes echoing one another, sometimes conflicting. But both albums reward repeated listens.

Jealous Machines tends in a darker, more modernist direction. On Lese Majesty, Shabazz Palaces leaned towards the indulgent, with a scattershot track sequence that was heavy on under-developed ideas bordering on interludes. This time, Butler and Maraire tighten their focus even as they serve up twice as much music.

Butler's voice navigates masterfully through the cosmic slop. In a way, it too is a softly narcotizing beam, coursing through slow-motion, spaced-out avant-funk and lurching creep-show house rhythms with typically mind-bending wordplay. Compared to Lese Majesty, this similarly concise set is a bit murkier and only slightly less enticing.

Not everything is as memorable as everything else and there are a few tracks which perhaps have a tendency to meander a bit too long, but these do not take away from the overall feel of the album, more just drift off into space as is the predominant feeling of the two records.

The power of Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star and Quazarz vs the Jealous Machines comes from the way they spike their dense, abstract sound with moments of accessibility: a band broadening what they do without blunting their edge or losing their uniqueness.

The group’s most ambitious work yet. ... Elsewhere, “The 55 Quintessence” castigates “fascist terrorists with hashtags”, while a modicum of counterbalance is provided by the romantic throbs of “Julian’s Dream” and especially “Effeminence”, a hypnotically shuffling, sensuous piece which demonstrates that Quazarz is just as vulnerable to the lure of the ladies.

This uncompromising obscurity will turn off some, and understandably so. Beneath that, the band are writing songs that make floating into oblivion sound appealing.

The result is a thrilling excursion, possessing an otherworldly ambience and substance you'll spend months decoding, every spin yielding something new. [Aug 2017, p.88]

A sweltering sun-baked quality. Lyrically, meanwhile, the concept--of discomfort with technology--comes a little more into focus here. [Aug 2017, p.31]

Butler's spacey sing-song tones skip across the muddy off-kilter beats, forging a sound that is both immediate and moreish. [Aug 2017, p.110]