Moin – the post-punk, post-hardcore project of London’s Joe Andrews, Tom Halstead and Valentina Magaletti – isn’t so much a band as it is a means of presenting older, excavated sounds now. It began as a spin-off of Andrews and Halstead’s primary project Raime, whose 2012 debut was lauded for the way it incorporated industrial, goth and dub into doomy electronics. After their 2016 follow-up signalled a shift towards skeletal post-punk, Andrews and Halstead resumed their efforts with the more post-punk focused Moin, this time with Magaletti in tow. (Magaletti is a prolific percussionist and composer in her own right, who has had a hand in some of the most thrilling avant garde releases of the past few years.)
Moin’s 2021 album Moot! wore its Slint and Shellac references on its sleeve, reassembling them into fresher and more sinewy grooves, and on this year’s Paste, Moin continue to channel riffs and textures from the heyday of Touch and Go Records. On Forgetting Is Like Syrup, chopped-and-screwed vocal samples are layered atop loops of laughter and glass breaking. There’s something uncanny about this album: drums sit prominently in the mix, and Moin’s collaging of spoken word, poetry and other samples is careful and sparse, creating an impactful kind of minimalism. Moin’s approach on Paste is barebones, but discerning – taking a craft knife to 80s and 90s indie music and using it to fashion their most fleshed-out release yet.
