Music Review: Moja – I’m hungry !! (Album)

When two musicians join forces, the sound they create is often bigger than their constituent parts. It’s a strange inversion of physics that shouldn’t really work, yet Moja prove that such a union can be as explosive as anything produced by a large orchestral ensemble. Hailing from Tokyo and comprising of drummer Masumi and bassist/vocalist Haru, Moja have assembled an uncompromising discography over the past ten years, with each subsequent release pushing at sonic boundaries and exploring the outer realms of music. Featuring seven tracks, the band’s latest album, I’m hungry !!, follows a similar trajectory, finding the pair unleashing their most visceral offering but, paradoxically, also their most musical, making I’m hungry !! Moja’s easiest accessible album.

In a move that is indicative of I’m hungry !! as a whole, the opening track Excuse me doesn’t waste time on fancy introductions or elongated preambles, preferring a direct approach that makes a beeline for the listener’s memory bank. Like a ball bouncing perpetually between two walls or dried peas rattling inside an empty can, Moja creates a sound that’s all encompassing and one that is hard to ignore. Excuse me (and the whole album) isn’t the kind of music you play as background music to aid study; rather, it demands your full attention.

However, that’s not to say Moja are one-dimensional, far from it; there are various opposites that echo throughout this album that help to enhance the feeling of enormity. Within the band’s swirling maelstrom, there are moments of quiet that highlight the louder sections, not unlike a mirror strategically placed, which makes a room feel larger than it actually is. Likewise, the interplay between the male and female vocals makes for an intriguing dichotomy, often working in tandem, sometimes at varying counterpoints, the vocals become an instrument in themselves and add another layer to the band’s sound. Take the following Food for example: a list of various types of junk food is reeled off in a rather nondescript manner and is sandwiched between dense sonics where Haru and Masumi attack their instruments with great gusto and create huge walls of sonics that are contrasted with the lighter shades. It all conspires to make a multifaceted, multicoloured affair that never fails to dazzle the listener.

Perhaps Moja’s greatest achievement with I’m hungry !! is wrapping complexity up within simplicity; the likes of No thank you and Making noise are musical mazes in which it is quite easy to become lost. They are wormholes, rips in the fabric of space and time, into which you enter, but might never find a way out, yet no matter how cerebral the band might get, becoming mathematicians of Einsteinian proportions and manipulating time signatures, there’s always a strong focus on melody and song structure, ensuring that the listener is constantly engaged, with no chance of their attention flagging. With no two songs inhabiting the same sonic space, I’m hungry !! is an album stitched together by its own eclecticism and despite the quite jarring shifts that occur between tracks, it is an album that flows extremely well.

On an album that is often sonically dense, Zero makes for a bleak and stark closer that is all the more poignant for its sparseness. An album that will reward repeat plays as meanings hidden deep in the mix will bubble to the surface on successive spins, I’m hungry !! will sate even the biggest appetites.