Kyp Malone opens his diverse musical palette on his debut solo album. Photo / Supplied

Kyp Malone opens his diverse musical palette on his debut solo album. Photo / Supplied

Kyp Malone is a little defensive about his band TV on the Radio going on a year-long hiatus. Considering they have been one of the most innovative and acclaimed bands of the last five years, and latest album Dear Science was one of the best of 2008, it seems an odd move.

"After spending five years solid together everybody needs a break," he says simply. "Only good things will come from it."

Besides, Malone, under the guise of Rain Machine, will release his debut solo album in just over a week. "But I can't take responsibility for the band's break because I feel like it would have happened whether I had a record coming out or not." In TV On the Radio Malone is not the most prolific songwriter in the group, with leader Tunde Adepimbe the dominant contributor.

But Malone's the man behind some of the Brooklyn-based quintet's best and most intriguing songs, such as woozy beauty I Was A Lover and the clattery chaos of Playhouses, from 2006's Return To Cookie Mountain, and most recently, co-writing Red Dress and Golden Age, the more rocky and catchy tracks off Dear Science.

On Rain Machine he slices open his diverse musical palette - that takes in everything from Afro-beat and field recordings to free jazz and freaky folk - and lays it out for everyone to see. In the process he comes up with his most potent and revealing songs to date. Although he's quick to point out, albeit rather cryptically, that: "They're not really more personal, they're just a little less coded. All the songs are personal, and there's no way I can step outside of myself [when he writes songs].

"I guess you can key in other people and other voices, and try to give them words from yourself. But that being said, there is more overtly personal stuff here than I've done for TV on the Radio."

Perhaps the biggest change is the "different freedom" that comes with being out on his own making music.

"There's a consensus that has to be come to when there are five different people whose names are going to be on the record. And they all have to be happy about what that ends up being. Whereas if you're doing something that's up to you then you don't have to worry about that. You make mistakes, and you have some successes. That's freedom."

It's clear from the outset of the album that Malone is about to unleash with Give Blood's mangled tribal pulse and possessed rants of "give blood, give blood" making for an ominous beginning.

Then there's the menacing Smiling Black Faces, about the killing of black man Sean Bell by New York police officers in 2006; the simmering noise pop of Hold You Holy; and not many musicians could come up with an 11-minute folk song like Winter Song, a dulcet and discordant rambler of a track that ends the album.