Malcolm Galloway is instantly familiar to readers of this website as one half alongside Mark Gatland of the innovative modern progressive rock band, Hats Off Gentlemen, It’s Adequate.

In addition to the band, Malcolm also releases solo material. He is decidedly prolific, and his solo material is a combination of the classical, electronica, and minimalist instrumental work.

Last year, he released a single, Metazoa One, Metazoa being multicellular organisms having tissues with differentiated functions, so basically all the animal world excepting your amoeba and Spongebob Squarepants. The full album contains three Metazoa suites which form the core of this intelligent and hugely enjoyable work. You can read all of Malcolm’s fascinating backdrop to the album as a whole on the Bandcamp page at https://malcolmgalloway.bandcamp.com/album/metazoa The album is available on general release 18th April 2025. Incidentally, Malcolm also designs the album covers, using a mix of photography or original artwork enhanced by AI.

The three Metazoa suites comprise some 34 minutes of music, so a fair old slab, and I shall discuss these first. Firstly, those of you familiar with the band’s music from either reviews such as this or from listening to them on the radio, should be aware that this is absolutely nothing like that. I would probably best describe it as I would “traditional” classical music, compositions which demand respect and attention, and not merely on as so-called background music. Sometimes expansive, sometimes stripped back, part rhythmic, part trance.

The synths wash over you, and inherent within the keyboard rhythm are modern exemplars of the type of music Pete Townsend was experimenting with at the time of The Lighthouse, itself meant to be a suite of music with futuristic sounds very much at the core, a mature follow on from Tommy. The soundscapes produced are symphonic and lush once, then urgent, alongside deep pulsing bass notes, so a mix of rhythms and effects, but drawing the listener in an almost a trancey way – it would be interesting to see this music being played at those dance nightclubs which do still operate (many having closed in recent years), because some of it is really not a million miles away from some of the music produced back in the day before you then get gorgeous waves of sounds which transport you across the ether, or, perhaps more appropriately, back in time to view how we evolved, a la Tangerine Dream or Vangelis, so it is to aficionados of this wide range the album will definitely appeal to.

For the second suite, I simply picture a maestro at his/her piano at the front of the stage setting the scene and the pace, with a full orchestra behind producing the waves of sound, and listening to it, it really is difficult to accept that this is the work of one man and produced without the use of any traditional string instruments. Very clever and supremely modern classical music you likely won’t hear on Classic FM. Some of this suite as it develops has a distinctly middle eastern vibe, so perhaps alluding to the cradle of civilisation before the close brings us back to the start, more of a traditional symphonic sound.

The third suite starts with more of those Townsend sounds I described before leading a charge with lush synths creating a soundscape above and brass effects producing something a little darker before a gorgeous explosion of orchestration heralds a dramatic joy of life itself before the closing passage of the suite moves into pure electronica, a gorgeous wall of sound produced by the synths. I have embedded it below.

There are five other pieces on the album, which we shall discuss briefly. Cnidaria are soft-bodied stinging aquatics, so anyone who has ever swum off the coast of Malta will be intimately familiar with the beasts! The music, however, is not a dramatic stinging, but rather an ambient electronica work where you close your eyes, and see them floating, seemingly lifeless, across the sea. There is some nice percussion on this.

Xenobotany, the study of alien plants, thus far a hypothetical science. Just short of six minutes long, this is the shortest piece on the album, and I have embedded it below for you. Turn the volume on your speakers up, allow this to envelope you, and imagine yourself on that alien world about to take a sample of a lifeform not indigenous to earth for the first time. I find this track very accessible, the piano work especially urgent, so a celebration of that experience as opposed to something threatening, which itself makes a nice change from the usual depiction of alien life.

Float/Drop starts off with laid back piano notes against synths overhead, but there is a menacing feel to this, distinctly dark, a premonition of something rather nasty about to happen.

The Anxiety Machine was originally written as a long instrumental piece, then adapted to become The Anxiety Machine Parts 1-3 in the superb 2023 Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate album, ‘The Light Of Ancient Mistakes’. What we have on Metazoa is the original version, an epic at over fourteen and a half minutes. In my review of that wonderful album, I stated that “these short pieces, to these ears, mark the band as the natural successors to the classic futuristic music of the day such as Tangerine Dream or Kraftwerk”. I haven’t changed my mind, and I have embedded them in addition to the Metazoa long version below for you to listen and hear the contrasts between them. Further, clicking on the button will take you to my words written when reviewing the HOGIA version.

The album closes with Aquasoma Three, named after the simulated peaceful aquatic world in which the characters in Philip K Dick’s ‘A Maze Of Death’ find temporary respite. It is suitably dreamlike, a haven from noise and danger, hypnotic and ambient music at its best.

In a world which, when viewed from the cultural mainstream, seems to be ever more bereft of ideas, concepts, intelligent execution, Malcolm Galloway is a very important counterpoint for us who yearn for, and appreciate, something more in our musical lives. This is a very good album, and I thoroughly recommend it to you. I referred above to the marked contrast between this and HOGIA – where there is a similarity, though, is this. I think readers of this website will, like me, love both, because we do not restrict ourselves to mono-genre.