Selections: Manuka Honey

Marissa Malik is back on Club Romantico with six tracks that prove nobody does it quite like Manuka Honey. Packed with steely beats and jagged synths that undulate to sultry, syncopated rhythms, ‘3Eternities Beneath You’ is oily, industrial and intoxicating. ‘Sinners Dirge’ and ‘Inconsolable’ are woozy marches, with carnivalesque touches that feel raw and ritualistic alongside cold, cybernetic enhancements. 

On ‘I Like It’, Malik teams up with Safety Trance (aka Cardopusher) to build a deep, cinematic soundbed for La Favi’s vocals, which slip and slide over like loose silk, while ‘Miniskirt’ with label boss Florentino is all itchy percussion and raging hoovers. ‘Te Aviso’ cranks up the tempo, with Malik driving the kicks hard before switching to a grinding halftime pulse. Closer ‘When Oracles Watch’ goes in the opposite direction, with a sparse beat embedded in the kind of squelchy, smoky ambience that makes the air itself feel dense.  

It’s these kinds of heady tracks, productions that merge the tough, the sexy and the psychedelic, that have seen Malik’s profile rocket globally. They’ve had regular bookings in the US, UK and across the EU in recent years — including 2023’s Sónar Barcelona — and toured Asia last year. In March alone they’ll be performing in Chicago, Detroit and New York before hopping across the pond to take in Porto, Amsterdam and Bern. 

Here, Manuka Honey shares some tracks you might hear at those shows, alongside some other inspiring music.