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Greg Segal — Maintain!
(Phantom Airship No #, 2026, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2026-04-18

Maintain! Cover art

Back in the days of the printed Exposé editions (1993-2010), hardly an issue would go by without a new release by Greg Segal, or one of the bands or collaborations that he was a part of (Jugalbandi, Cold Sky, etc.). It seems the last ones we reviewed were his two Greg Segal and Friends albums Visible (the mailbox album) and then Invisible Ground of Sympathy, roughly eight years ago. One look at his Bandcamp page shows that all this time he’s still very busy creating new music, as well as releasing older stuff he did with his band Paper Bag back in the 80s. There’s no time for a modern composer to rest on his laurels, by my count he must have at least 90 releases. About that title: Maintain! That was what your frends used to tell you (quietly) after you’d been smoking the good stuff and their parents suddenly came home unexpectedly… Maintain! However, if they caught you playing the strange instrumental music contained in these eight tracks, your cover was pretty much blown — you had to be stoned! While there isn’t a lot of information at hand letting the listener know how this was made, what we do know is that Segal did it all himself, mostly with keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, electronics, and percussion, and as I listen to it I’m reminded somewhat of those electronic albums one used to buy in headshops with a big warning sticker on the cover that said ‘Don’t play this album when you are stoned,’ and of course the first thing you would do  when you got home is fire one up and give it a listen. I’ve still got a couple of those LPs! The eight tracks herein can go just about anywhere and everywhere, far outside of any regular genre boundaries, and never where one would expect; all of the tracks are experimental, unpredictable, and even strangely beautiful, sometimes almost like pieces of recorded tape that were cut and pasted back together in odd ways to screw with the listener’s head. Pieces with titles like “The Organism Vibrates,” “Mysterious Squirrel Dance Ritual,” and “We Who Live and Leave No Trace,” most well beyond description — you really have to give it a listen to know. And don’t come home at 9AM on a Thursday morning in the middle of the summer saying that you were at a high school football game all night and the police wouldn’t let anyone leave because some girl had a gun. That’s not cool, they will know. Maintain!

Filed under: New releases, 2026 releases

Related artist(s): Greg Segal

More info
http://gregsegal.bandcamp.com/album/maintain

 

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