Maniac Maisonマニアックメソン
DATA
Label
Humpty Dumpty Records
Format
LP/Digital
Release Date
May 22, 2026
TRACKLISTING
01. Les pantoufles
02. Dora neko
03. Jojo
04. Je travaille sur ma musique
05. Death companions
06. New museum
07. The lake
08. Winter memories
09. Avenues
10. Brutalist self portrait
ABOUT THE RELEASE
Maniac Maison – the sickeningly talented Brussels-based three-piece with a penchant for wild synth melodies and unexpected turns – release their self-titled debut album through Belgian DIY label Humpty Dumpty records (Yôkaï, Monolithe Noir, Coraline Gaye, Mountain Bike).
Maniac Maison started when Berklee-trained jazz pianist and film composer Casimir Liberski was looking to bring pop form to some hairy midi-based sketches at the back of his hard drive. Subsequently, he brought in his childhood friend and prog-pop auteur Lucien Fraipont (Robbing Millions, Aksak Maboul, Duid) and fellow Berklee-alumni and Japanese girlfriend Shoko Igarashi to collaborate.
Despite Casimir having the initial material, the project soon developed beyond Lucien being the “form” guy and Casimir the ideas man. It became a truly collective production, where the distinctive musical personality of each member comes through with them each having an equal share of songs.
The three first became close during a trip to Los Angeles in 2017 that was serendipitous by virtue of the fact that they were all going there for separate reasons, and they had the sort of time there that you couldn’t plan if you tried. They were all welcomed to the inner circle of the Echo Park indie scene and spent time at the likes of Ariel Pink and Mac De Marco’s houses thanks to Lucien’s well-connected producer Shags Chamberlain.
Yet, with Shoko and Casimir still living in New York, and Lucien over in Brussels, it wasn’t until they were all living in Belgium full-time that they would start working on Maniac Maison material. In 2020, Casimir built a studio in the basement of an art déco house Brussels’ Ixelles district that he lived in with Shoko and Lucien was in and out. Making full use of lockdown, hundreds of songs were amassed then eventually a core of 10 made it across the finish line.
They might all have jazz backgrounds but the music bears little resemblance to it in any pure or classical sense. They all bond over their appreciation for boundary-breaking outsider art and are ill concerned with what’s the so-called “hip” thing to make. They’ve been inspired by everything from Japan’s electronic pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra and Belgian’s synth-pop boffins Telex, to vintage Japanese video game soundtracks and Mozart. With this apparent lack of orthodox references, does Casimir consider himself a contrarian?
“I’m always trying to find a different angle to what’s being made now,” he says. “If there’s too much of one thing – for example if every producer is doing trap I’m not going to do trap – it doesn’t inspire me. Most of my musical peers employ that anti-commercial logic and I feel if the race to be exactly in the clichéd commercial common ground is already saturated, I might as well do the opposite and bring some other people in.”
This boundary-breaking approach rears its head in an impressive way on the dreamy, heroic second track, ‘Dora Neko’ – an avant-pop number sung beautifully by the soulful Shoko in Japanese and underpinned by dizzying synth flourish. It incorporates a complete chord progression being put in reverse to sound less predictable. “It was breaking the traditional way of progressing harmonies.” says Casimir.
Elsewhere, their penchant for free association comes through on ‘Death Companions’, with the central motif on the track a sample of The Simpsons bully Nelson going “ha-ha!”. A highlight of this busily eclectic track, with its slick, funky low-end and the frenzied feel of a vintage video game soundtrack, is Shoko’s saxophone. Her stunning solo reflects those years competing at the top of the New York jazz scene and proves it’s paid dividends.
Despite there being long passages within the album being more anarchic space for people to trip out to and not songs per se, Shoko is the lead singer of the group, singing in three languages (Japanese, French and English) and she feels central to the whole album as a consequence. The pop-y ‘New Museum’ is charmingly goofy, with this deliberately banal lyric about not going to a museum. It reflects their love for Belgian Eurovision legends Telex and the stream of conscious approach that was encouraged in their home recording studio in Brussels.
The Telex influence also comes to the fore in the band’s dark, distinctively Belgian sense of humour. The track ‘Je Travaille Sur Ma Musique’ – which has this marching, heavy metal rhythm underpinning Shoko’s lyrics – translates from French to: “I won’t come to your funeral because I have to work on my music.” Seemingly it’s a tongue-in-cheek nod to the sacrifices they each have made in pursuit of chasing the impossibility of perfection with their instruments. As a highlight, we’re treated to hearing just a snippet of what Casimir is capable of on classical piano as he teasingly recites Mozart on a grand piano perfectly for the coda.
Elsewhere, ‘The Lake’ is an electro indie banger that eschews the temptation for dramatic shifts in timbre in favour of keeping things a little less left-field and more – whisper it – radio friendly. Yet even here we’re not left without their mind-bogglingly entertaining eccentric flourishes.
The album’s ability to teleport you to different eras and worlds whilst still feeling distinctly planet Maniac Maison is part of its charm. You feel whisked off to Japan at various points across the album but especially via the dreamy new age opening track ‘Les Pantoufles’ – which is adorned too with what sounds like throat singing as one of its many layers. It makes sense that timbres and melodies reminiscent of Japanese are prominent because not only is it where Shoko grew up; it’s a country that Casimir has been visiting since he was a teen. Whether that be anime music, video game music or the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Casimir’s plumbed the depths of that cultural well meticulously. Moreover, one of the many soundtracks he’s written was for his dad Stefan Liberski’s film Tokyo Fiancée.
Clearly with Maniac Maison, the three members have stumbled across a rare, and inspired run of form that seems possible only with the fresh excitement of striking new ground and not feeling like you’re plodding along the same path. And found a means of expressing their musical make up and identities individually and collectively – utilising their jazz DNA but taking a genre-travelling approach that shelved orthodoxy at every turn.
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