Emmanuel Elone: This song is seriously misleading. The song’s title makes it sound as if the track will be abrasive, dissonant, and full of pummeling riffs. Luckily, Maylight instead decided to create a jazzy electronic piece with some stellar female vocals carrying the song along. Light synths come in, but the horns and percussion deserve the most credit in adding personality and swagger to the full vocals laid on the track. “Heavy Artillery” could use some additional instrumentation to make it feel more organic and lively, and it doesn’t have as powerful a climax as it should have. Still, it’s a great song that successfully combines both jazz and electronic without having one overpower the other, and Maylight should be commended for maintaining that balance of genres throughout. [7/10]
Chris Ingalls: Things start off tentatively, but once the song finds a groove, it’s a stuttering but fun ride. The modern keyboard sounds mesh nicely with the jazzy vocals. The drumming gets more inventive as the song goes on, and the addition of horns adds yet another melodic layer. A bit like Propellerheads or US3 retrofitted for the 21st century. [7/10]
Pryor Stroud: Resembling an amalgam of future-funk and experimental jazz, “Heavy Artillery” follows Lizzy Parks’ sultry vocal performance through a contracting fog of electronic whirrings and lounge-room bass. But its gaze is never focused. Throughout, there is a sense of thick blurriness that refuses to dissipate: Parks floats in and out of various sonic textures that seemingly interweave and materialize in real-time. Drum kit pitter-patter, computerized glitch-drones, and stuttering saxophone all seem to surround her, threatening a fate of permanent envelopment; sometimes she climbs into the air above them, her voice clear, robust, and resplendent, and sometimes she succumbs to their pull, drifting into the background, a vapor among many vapors. [6/10]
Chad Miller: The music and production is amazing, and the understated vocals do a great job floating on top of the underground feel of the track. The vocals breakout near the end, and the track feels reinvented even though the music is relatively the same. [7/10]
Maylight’s debut album, Almighty, releases March 24th via BBE.
SCORE: 6.75