'POLYHYMNIA' and 'IN LETHE EP' available here
“One of the most beautiful voices in modern music.â€
~ Oedipus, Vice President of Alternative Programming, Infinity Broadcasting
Jaggery "Polyhymnia" New York USA 2006:
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 is a Brooklyn-based collective that works the dark edge of a genre-defying musical style (darkwave jazz?). They bring to mind a more classical, organic, avant-jazz oriented Cocteau Twins, or a "white witch" counter to the haunting Diamanda Galas. Certainly, Jaggery's pianist/lead vocalist Mali Sastri has a capitivating, powerful, entrancing voice, lending the overall sound an exotic, mystical, far eastern aura. The band also features celtic harp (Jesse Sparhawk), stand-up bass (Tony Leva) and two absolutely possessed percussionists (Daniel Schubmehl & Raky Sastri). Electric guitar (Ziggy Drozdowski) is worked into some songs, but definitley more Frith than Slash. Let the dark, velvety warmth of Jaggery be your soundtrack for a mysterious, unreal dreamstate.
~ 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