Jaggery

“Torture chamber pop.” “Darkwave jazz.” “Siren rock.” These are a few of the many attempts to describe the sound of Jaggery, an art-rock collective which weaves harp, viola, piano, contrabass, and drum kit into a universe of its own, setting the scene for “one of the most beautiful voices in modern music.” Powerful enough to harness the fiery churnings beneath a volcano as well as the ethereal light of a dying star, frontwoman Singer Mali’s voice regularly leaves listeners viscerally stunned and with goosebumps. She is flanked by a rotating lineup of musicians and instrumentation including Daniel Schubmehl’s West African approach to the drum kit, with jazz influences, Tony Leva’s funky upright bass, Rachel Jayson’s avant-classical viola, and Petaluma Vale’s glistening Celtic harp and backing vocals. This “exotic musical mobile” evokes a world of both dark, earth elements and celestial swirls ~ what Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda” might sound like with Bjork singing over the top of it. The band’s repertoire bridges the delicate and explosive ~ from haunting lullabies to furious, mixed-meter rants; tightly-woven compositions in odd time signatures to catharsis-inducing, barn-burning mini-epics (oft-times within the same song). Jaggery (the word comes from the dark brown, Indian sugar) has toured up and down the east coast, and has released three recordings: the 2004 in lethe ep, the 2006 full-length Polyhymnia, and 2010’s recently-released ‘Upon A Penumbra’. Jaggery’s first music video (‘O Scorpio) won their director “Most Promising New England Filmmaker 2009” at the Boston Underground Film Festival. The band recently released their second music video, 'Sea of Sideways.'



“One of the most beautiful voices in modern music.”



~ Oedipus, Vice President of Alternative Programming, Infinity Broadcasting
Jaggery "Polyhymnia" New York USA 2006:



JAGGERY
The Middle East, Cambridge
6/10/08
You go to shows with the hope of a good time, with sugar plums dancing in your filthy frontal lobes, with the hope of a mind blowing circus of musical madness whose electric flesh paints the eyes of mother creation herself. However hard the ladder is to find, sometimes you get lucky and stumble upon a monolith of goodness.
This is the case at the Middle East where the band Jaggery conjures up an impressively unique set, dancing between Bjork, Diamanda Galas and Jack Kerouac. Mali Sastri (the lead vocalist and pianist) has a vocal style all her own, infused with petals of passion and rubies of inspiration. The singing crawls, runs, and soars over an instrumental sea of piano, contrabass and drums. The piano playing paints a brilliant horizon of tradition meeting innovation. The contrabass fills the oceans of planet Jaggery with waves of experimentation and skill. Suddenly out of the clouds come the percussive mountains and foothills laid down by Daniel Schubmehl crashing and smashing to the highest peaks, tracing the shorelines and splashing into the water with jazz flecks, rock specks, and magick tricks. Jaggery is for those who want beautiful original music that's dark in the vein of Van Goghs Starry Night. Don't wait pluck this jewel post haste!



~ The Noise (Boston)



At times Jaggery makes you wonder, "what if Dave Brubeck and Diamanda Galas jammed?" The band's singer/pianist, Mali Sastri, conjures up emotion and atmosphere which can only be weighed on a global scale. Her voice can be leaf floating in the wind, and then become an Earth-shaking Everest-sized volcano. Yet delicate or explosive, it's always magnificent, captivating, and sustained by a gorgeous tapestry woven by her brilliantly talented band. Jaggery features dream-like harp, soulful stand-up bass and rich, organic percussion. This debut album has the warmth of Blue Bell Knoll-era Cocteau Twins with a modern avant-jazz sensibility, wrapped in an ethereal, spiritual, blue velvet haze, full of mystery and intrigue.
~ Triage Music



Jaggery "In Lethe'" (EP) New York, USA 2004:
Mali's voice has the depth, charm, and finesse of a mermaid in distress. Her siren call enthralls listeners embracing the visceral and yet subdued caterwaul cooing that is her sublime vocal presence. Lethe is as likely a birthing ground for the sound as any. Entranced and certain of having one's cortexes erased of any ill-begotten thoughts and meanderings, this music relaxes our tight grip on reality, transporting readily. Supplanted in Hades for the duration, unmitigated immersion begets greedy quaffs of this divine musical elixir.
Peals of escape traipse along your face as the world fades from view, created anew from an intimately interior space. Likewise nightmarish and soporific, simultaneously hopeful and melancholic, purportedly diametric factions of the soul are mesmerized in tandem via polarized dynamics. Jaggery is expertly lethal in anthropomorphizing the riddled incubus rattle within this mortal coil. Wholeness binds and blinds us. The careening verse, 'I can never fill up this hole,' beaming powerfully from inside of the cavernous recesses in "7 Stone" could not be more of a truism.
Summarily shaking off the soot of humanity's foibles and subtly corralling the essence of phoenix ascent from the depths of a dark pupal id, this windswept prancing blurs fathomless. Not a single moment is spared their keen idiosyncrasy. Somersaulting lugubriously, structures tumultuously sprawl into an effortless sub-routine of rollicking acrobatics. Tension mounts opportunely to decidedly raucous peaks as melodic lines undulate, glowing and glistening underneath, bearing the weighty anticipation of soaring narcoleptic liberation. Do not sleep, be reborn.



Cesar Montesano
10/19/05
I reviewed this Brooklyn group’s three-song demo when they were The Throes, and their essentials remain the same on this five-song, 28-minute EP as Jaggery. Mali Sastri’s unearthly voice (I compared her to Enya) still coos like she’s a choirgirl singing madrigals or hisses in a guttural growl like an irritated Ani DiFranco. Her brother Raky Sastri backs her up with some oddly timed, arrhythmic, freeform jazz drumming that has me wondering how he manages to hold it together against the strident piano and mysterious organ. Nor really jazz, not pop, not ethereal rock – this is not like anything else you’ve heard, aside from maybe what Suddenly, Tammy! might sound like with a hyper-jazz drummer and a gothic bent. In Lethe would provide a murky, absorbing soundtrack for Silence of the Lambs II, perhaps, and it’s really unusual music for sure.



~ Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover, Issue No. 56