Doctor’s Orders: Maquina prescribe their nine favourite records
If you’ve been having a bad day, engaging with art frequently offers a place of solace that one can escape to while shunning any negativity to the depths of their internal monologue.
With music one of the more common mediums that people use to relieve all bad vibes, there are still a multitude of different ways in which you can approach the act of putting something on the turntable to improve your well-being. Either you take the safe route and play something that is deliberately relaxing or familiar, using it as a comfort blanket you can swaddle yourself in, or you can jump straight to the most abrasive record in your library and use it to drive that malaise into oblivion.
For Lisbon-based noise rock trio Maquina, their personal musical safe-space straddles all extremes of the spectrum, ranging from comforting to cerebral, and from irreverent to urgent. Their latest album, Body Transmission, fluctuates between utilising propulsive post-punk rhythms and crunching metal riffs before segueing into passages of gloriously warped body music. It makes sense that their own listening habits would tend to veer towards the extreme, and understandably, the albums they feel represent them best are ones that encompass all of the above.
Their music may seem threatening at first, but allow yourself to be absorbed by their relentless energy and you’ll recognise that what the Portuguese trio offer is a place to let loose, freely express yourself through primal movement, and allow it all to culminate in a release of ecstatic euphoria.
Speaking to the band about the records that make them tick and have most heavily influenced their own personal identities as well as their collective approach, the trio each obliged to provide three personal favourite albums to be prescribed in perhaps the most vicious edition of Doctor’s Orders for Far Out.
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Maquina’s nine favourite albums:
Sepultura – ‘Arise’
Perhaps best known for ushering in the funk-laden nu-metal trend with their 1996 breakthrough album Roots, Brazilian thrash outfit Sepultura were once a far more foul and punishing act who stood tall against their American counterparts in Metallica and Slayer as one of the finest in their field.
Far from being the sort of album one can find peace and quiet with, Arise is a primal scream of rage and technical musicality on full display that instead offers the opportunity to expel all bad feelings through its relentless barrage of noise. Drummer and vocalist Halison Peres selects their titanic fifth album as a personal favourite, citing how it’s “heavy, relentless, and every song is a punch in your face”.
Truly, the sort of thing one can kick back to, right?
The War on Drugs – ‘Lost in the Dream’
A far more tender and texturally warm record from Peres, The War on Drugs’ Lost in the Dream is an airy exploration of heartland rock and neo-psychedelia that became the soundtrack to many consecutive summers in the mid-2010s. While Maquina’s sound borrows significantly less from Adam Granduciel’s breezy approach, that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty that Peres can draw from on a more spiritually affecting level.
“In contrast with Sepultura, this is a very chill album where I really enjoy being alone listening to it,” Peres proclaims. “I’d call it my comfort zone”.
There’s no walls of noise, no guttural growling vocals, and no breakneck guitar solos, just a collection of feel-good songs with driving rhythms that are bound to lift the spirits rather than exorcise them, all punctuated by warping ambient interludes that allow you to do exactly as the title implies.
Ramones – ‘Ramones’
Ramones’ self-titled 1976 debut may be seen as a landmark release in punk rock, but there’s far more to what the Queens, New York foursome managed to achieve with their no-nonsense introduction to the world. Barely clocking in shy of half an hour, every song revels in its immediacy and simple structure, but also manages to turn their rebellious punk spirit into a celebration of succinct pop songwriting, effectively introducing themselves to the world as the first and best pop punk band of all time.
Given that the Ramones introduced themselves to the world with such a bold and easy to understand objective in mind, Peres insists that there are “no introductions needed” for his final pick, given how they perfectly managed to do it themselves, but further explains that the inclusion of the record was something of a no-brainer given how much of a constant it has been for him, stating that it’s “the first band and first album of my life”.
MadMadMad – ‘Behavioural Sink Delirium’
Shifting to something more confounding and cerebral, the first of bassist José Mendy’s trio of picks comes courtesy of Anglo-French dance-punk oddballs MadMadMad, with their 2023 album Behavioural Sink Delirium. Given how Maquina have adopted something of a similar ethos inasmuch as their music exists in a space between the moshpit and the dancefloor, it makes sense that Mendy would have something of an infatuation with the trio and their glitchy motorik rhythms.
Since the album is best listened to for a more concise idea of what it offers and does its absolute best to defy any and all description, Mendy chose to keep his reasoning for selecting the record succinct, simply choosing to praise it for being “bold, experimental and fun”.
Behavioural Sink Delirium ticks all three of these boxes with aplomb and makes for one of the most chaotically entertaining yet vastly underrated albums of the decade.
Squid – ‘Bright Green Field’
Staying on a more groove-oriented path, but arguably with far more overt nods to the British canon of post-punk and art rock, Mendy also nods in the direction of Squid’s 2020 debut album, Bright Green Field, as a record that he never tires of hearing and that provides something new to pick up on with every repeat listen.
Arguably the most broadly-influenced act to have graduated from Dan Carey’s Speedy Wunderground singles series, their first full-length displayed just how daring they cared to be, and this approach earned themselves plenty of welcome comparisons in the process. Mendy would tend to agree with many of the sentiments levelled at this modern classic, claiming that Squid are the “2020s’ Talking Heads,” and that they stand out for their incorporation of “simple, catchy grooves with intriguing harmonies.”
Arguably, they’ve only gone and expanded on this since.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – ‘Murder of the Universe’
Returning to the brasher side of what Maquina offers, the final part of Mendy’s holy trinity of albums comes courtesy of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, a band who have wilfully spent their entire career defying categorisation and switching from loungy jazz to Anatolian rock, often in the space of the same calendar year. One of their five 2017 albums, Murder of the Universe, stands out for Mendy as their opus, and a prime example of everything one could ask for from its curious genre settling-point.
“Complete, epic, groovy and progressive,” the bassist declares. “It has everything a great prog metal album needs, but not in an overwhelming way.” Given how King Gizzard have not only shown their brilliance at expansive psych-rock, prog and thrash metal over the years, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the group wouldn’t be straying too far out of their comfort zone on a record that dives headlong into such epic territory while not forgoing any of the intensity required from a metal album.
Föllakzoid – ‘V’
Formerly a fully-fledged band, the solo project of Chilean multi-instrumentalist Domingæ Garcia Huidobro has careered from space rock to minimal techno over the course of the last decade, but at its core, Föllakzoid has always maintained an exploratory tendency that veers from the ecstatic to the ethereal, and that can be heard most through her most recent offering, V.
Guitarist João Cavalheiro proclaims that this expansive four-track offering is as close as anything comes to being able to put him into a trance-like state, the ideal condition for relaxation. “It’s an endless pulsar driving in a space atmosphere, followed by a repetitive drumbeat,” he articulates, adding how he finds the album to be completely “hypnotic” in the way it presents itself over this quartet of slowly evolving tracks.
Conferência Inferno – ‘Pós-Esmeralda’
Taking an opportunity to hail some of their fellow Portuguese experimentalists, Cavalheiro also nominates Porto-based minimal wave outfit Conferência Inferno’s second album, Pós-Esmeralda, as an album that transports him to a better place. While the sparseness of the band’s sound offers plenty of space for calm reflection, there are twinkling synth lines that pop up throughout the album that add a layer of beauty to their work.
Without any fluency in Portuguese, it’s harder to pick up on what the lyrical content offers, but Cavalheiro explains that what the album offers is a “depth of dark thoughts and cheerful melodies, upbeat rhythms with post-punk spirit,” going on to make a bold statement that the album is “full of anthems.”
For any other non-native speakers, think of Pòs-Esmeralda as the Iberian Closer or Disintegration, and you’re part of the way there.
Liaisons Dangereuses – ‘Liaisons Dangereuses’
Sticking in the realm of minimal wave, Cavalheiro ties up his and Maquina’s picks with the sole studio album from pioneering German electronic trio Liaisons Dangereuses. A frequently cold and uninviting album, what Cavalheiro adores most about the record is its strangeness, and how the band create tension through their revolutionary experimentation.
“This is a milestone of electronic music,” Cavalheiro insists. “A mix of dark, experimental sounds with electric danceable beats and minimal basslines.”
While they certainly weren’t alone in this field, given how acts like Suicide and Cabaret Voltaire had already been operating in a similar vein prior to Liaisons Dangereuses’ 1981 release, it’s still far ahead of its time and sounds alien even to this day, presumably transporting Cavalheiro and other listeners to far-off places the minute they press play.
