S. Maharba is male and was born in Ipswich, England. That’s all that’s known about the musician. It seems to have become a well working strategy to obscure one’s identity as an artist in order to create some kind of hype around one’s work. S. Maharba’s music got its face through a stringent cover-design: it’s the face of Pin-Up-Girls in a uncommon coarseness that’s been embellishing his works. Maharba has developed quite an attractive concept, which combines the artist’s mysteriousness, good women-photography and an uncategorizable sound, and it’s again this combination that can be found on his new 12”. »French Maid« can easily be interpreted as a sexy song title with a little bit of fantasy and some experience in erotic films, and even S. Maharba himself has categorized his tracks as “Erotica” on soundcloud. Fair enough – because trying to find an actual genre for it all would be sheer nitpicking. In the beginning, synthz from the 80s are being mixed with some kind of Ibiza-Techno-flair, soon there are basses and bleeps à la Flying Lotus joining in and trying to find their way through our eardrums. What follows are shorter and slower passages with some French samples, which sound like Boards Of Canada’s relaxed beatmaking. From minute three on, it could actually be an instrumental by Clams Casino. All in all, it’s a song that’s just as multifaceted as Maharba’s EPs have been so far. The B-side is a remix by The Clonious from Vienna – the song starts out as if a war has broken out in a wasps’ nest. Then, a dubsteppy bassline begins to break through the countryside’s disharmonies. Until the very end, the song remains a hunt through bongos, hectic shakers and the mentioned bass line. The remix only leads to the need to turn the record around one more time – let’s say the B-side doesn’t actually improve the 12inch.
French Maid
