Posted in Whathaveyou on October 25th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Look, my coffee pot wouldn’t turn on at four this morning — whole plug was off — and I don’t yet know why, and Gondhawa have all of 20 seconds of music posted from their upcoming Mäanthagorī EP, so you’re just gonna have to pardon me if I just tell you I don’t know what the hell to expect from the thing when it arrives. I know I dug last year’s Käampâla (review here) well enough, but they don’t strike me as the kind of band who want to do the same thing all the time. Usually in cases like that, the press releases don’t include words like “boundless,” and Stolen Body Records has a knack for fostering the unpredictable.
So yeah, not much to go on at this point, but they honestly don’t need more than the 20 seconds in the aforementioned teaser to tell you it’s gonna be weird. The point comes across.
As you’ll see:
Offbeat psych-prog trio GONDHAWA to unveil details on new EP ‘Mäanthagorī’ – out this November 25th via Stolen Body Records.
Exuberant, quirky and brilliant, psychedelic magicians GONDHAWA bring to life uncommon and unique musical colours. Their boundless rock picks from the best of African, Oriental and even fictive cultures! Supported by British psychedelic record label Stolen Body Records (Slift, Karkara, Wyatt E.), the French trio announce the release of their new EP ‘Mäanthagorī’ on November 25th 2022.
Angers-based psych-prog three-piece GONDHAWA are an eclectic sonic tumult that ignore geographical and genre limitations. Their imagination ends where the impossible begins! Straddling the line between psychedelic and progressive rock, they write songs in their very own language: Gondhawii. Lulled by science-fiction literature, Gondhawa’s luminous and high-spirited universe rubs shoulders with afrobeat, oriental rhythms and the rock’n’roll frenzy.
GONDHAWA’s new EP ‘Mäanthagorī’ is a successful synthesis of revisited folk music and space rock. Hypnotic loops a la Moon Duo tickle with exuberant and futuristic ethnic elements. The two-track EP was recorded and mixed by Elliot & Stew at La Cuve studio (Angers, France) and mastered by Thibault Chaumont of Deviant Lab. Artwork by Léo Zedinn. The EP is coming out on November 25th 2022 via Stolen Body Records at the following formats: vinyl and digital. Watch teaser.
GONDHAWA new EP ‘Mäanthagorī’ Out November 25th 2022 in Stolen Body Records Artwork Leo Zedinn.
TRACK LISTING: 1. Go!Go! Sinay 2. Toko Mieko
GONDHAWA were born in 2018, following the musical wanderings of their three members who met a year before. Evolving in a garage rock direction until then, the three musicians from Angers, France, decided to break out of the mould and set off on a hallucinatory journey inspired by science fiction literature. From psychedelia to oriental music, passing through afrobeat and progressive rock, Gondhawa draw inspiration from all over the World. All of this converge towards an eclectic and singular musical universe, with lyrics written in their very own language : Gondhawii.
On stage, the power trio takes on a whole new dimension by introducing traditional Chinese instruments (sanxian), Malian instruments (n’goni) or a micro-tonal guitar, always seeking to expand their sound spectrum. Their performances are peppered with improvisations, immersing the audience into unique journeys around this rich blend of influences.
Gondhawa’s debut album ‘Käampâla’ was released on October 2021 on Bristol-based record label Stolen Body (Yo No Se, Slift, Karkara, Bad Pelican). Through the micro-tonal groove of “Raba Dishka”, the afrobeat stoner power of “Käampâla”, or the softness of “Djoliko” – a beautiful ballad lulled by the melancholy of acoustic strings from all around the World – Gondhawa deliver the soundtrack of an interstellar road-movie. Six tracks of electric tornado with a bunch of rhythms and textures.
Gondhawa’s new EP ‘Mäanthagorī’ arrives on November 25th 2022 through Stolen Body Records.
Posted in Reviews on January 19th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Getting to the halfway point of a Quarterly Review is always something special. I’m not trying to say it’s a hardship reviewing 50 records in a week — if anything it’s a relief, despite the strain it seems to put on my interpersonal relationships; The Patient Mrs. hates it and I can’t really fault her for that since it does consume a fair amount of my brain while it’s ongoing — but some days it comes down to ‘do I shower or do I write’ and usually writing wins out. I’ll shower later. Probably. Hopefully.
But today we pass halfway through and there’s a lot of killer still to come, so plenty to look forward to either way. The day starts with an old favorite I’ve included here basically as a favor to myself. Let’s go.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Sergio Ch., La Danza de los Tóxicos
Comparatively speaking, La Danza de los Tóxicos is a pretty straightforward solo offering from Soldati/Ararat/ex-Los Natas frontman Sergio Chotsourian, whose ealrier-2021 full-length, Koi (review here), featured both of his children, one rapping and one joining him on vocals for a Nine Inch Nails cover. Perhaps it’s in reaction to that record that this one feels more traditionalist, with Chotsourian (aka Sergio Ch.) still finding 11 minutes to drone out instrumentalist style on closer “Thor Hammer” and to sample Scarface at the start of “Late Train,” but in his guy-and-guitar ethic, a lot of this material sounds like the roots of things to come — Chotsourian has shared songs between projects for years — while keeping a balance between exploratory vibe and traditional structures on pieces like “Skinny Ass,” “La Esquina” and “88.”
Coated in burl and aggressive presentation as well as the occasional metaphors about stellar phenomena and hints/flourish of Latin rhythm and percussion, Titanosaur‘s fourth long-player, Absence of Universe, sees multi-instrumentalist, producer and vocalist Geoff Saavedra engaging with aggressive tonality and riff construction as well as the various instabilities of the moment in which the album was put together. “Conspiracy” feels somewhat self-explanatory from a lyrical standpoint, and both opener “The Echo Chamber” and “Shut Off the Voices” feel born of the era in their theme, while “So Happy” seems like a more personal perspective on mental health. Whatever a given song’s subject throughout the nine-track/42-minute offering, Saavedra delivers with a heavy rock born out of ’90s metal such that the breakdown in “So Happy” feels natural when it hits, and the rush of finale “Needed Order” seems like an earned expulsion of the tension so much of the record prior has been building, incluing the chugging force of “I Will Live Forever” immediately prior.
Future Fossils would seem to take its name from the idea of bringing these tracks together in some effort toward conservation, to keep them from getting lost to time or obscurity amid the various other works and incarnations of Insect Ark. The first three songs are synth-only solo pieces by Dana Schechter, recorded in 2018, and the final piece, “Gravitrons,” is a 23-minute live improvisation by Schechter and then-drummer Ashley Spungin recorded in New York in 2016. The sense that these things might someday be “discovered” as one might unearth a fossil is fair enough — the minimalism of “Gypsum Blade” has space enough to hold whatever evocations one might place on it, and while “Anopsian Volta” feels grounded with a line of piano, opener “Oral Thrush” seems more decidedly cinematic. All this of course is grist for the mill of “Gravitrons,’ which is consuming unto itself in its ambience and rife with experimentalist purpose. Going in order to have gone. As ethics go, that one feels particularly worth preserving.
Sludge and grind come together on Denver trio Never Kenezzard‘s The Long and Grinding Road, and through what seems to be some modern metallurgical miracle, the album sounds neither like Carcass‘ Swansong nor Dopethrone. After the pummeling beginning of “Gravity” and “Genie,” the interlude “Praer” and the subequent channel-panning-screamer “Ra” expand an anti-genre take as bent on individuality of sound as they apparently are on clever wordplay. “Demon Wheel” has a genuine heavy rock thrust, and “Slowburn” and the looped clock noise of “11:59:59” provide buffers between the extended cuts “Seven Statues” (11:31) and “The Long and Grinding Road” (14:55) itself, which closes, but by then the three-piece have established a will and a way to go wherever they want and you can follow if you’re up for it. So are you? Probably. There’s some underlying current of Faith No More-style fuckery in the sound, something playful about the way Never Kenezzard push themselves into abrasion. You can tell they’re having fun, and that affects the listening experience throughout the purposefully unmanageable 57 minutes of the album.
There’s a thread of noise rock that runs throughout Godlike Supervision, the debut full-length from Munich-based four-piece The Kupa Pities, and it brings grit to both the early-Clutch riffing of lead cut “Anthology” and the later, fuzz-overdose “Queen Machine.” It’s not just about aggression, though there’s some of that, but of the band putting their own spin on the established tenets of Kyuss-style desert and Fu Manchu-style heavy rocks. “Black Hole” digs into the punkish roots of the former, while the starts-and-stops of “Dance Baby Dance” and the sheer push of the title-track hint toward the latter, even if they’re a little sharper around the edges than the penultimate “Surfing,” which feels like it was titled after what the band do with their own groove — they seem to ride it in expert fashion. So be it. “Black Hole” works in a bit of atmosphere and “Burning Man” caps with a fair-enough blowout at the finish, ending the album on a note not unfamiliar but indicative of the twists The Kupa Pities are working to bring to their influences.
A newcomer trio, London’s Warpstormer brings together guitarist Scott Black (Green Lung), drummer Matthew Folley and bassist/vocalist Richard J. Morgan (ex-Oak), and their aptly-titled first EP, 1, presents four bangers of unrepentantly brash heavy rock and roll, channeling perhaps some of earlier Orange Goblin‘s boozy-wrecking-crew vibes, but on “Ride the Bomb” digging into post-hardcore and metal as well, the abidingly aggro sense undercut by a quiet stretch holding its tension in the drums as well as the drunken quiet start of “Devourer,” which gets plenty bruising by its finish but is slower in procession certainly than were “Here Comes Hell” and “Storm Caller” at the outset. They’re in and out and done in 19 minutes, but as what otherwise might be a demo, 1 gives a look at where Warpstormer are coming from and would seem to herald future incursions to come. I’ll take it. The songs come across as feeling out where the band wants to be in terms of sound, but where they’re headed, they’re headed with due charge.
Génesis Negro perhaps loses something in the audio-only experience. To wit, while Ricardo Jiménez Gómez is responsible for all the music on the album, it’s the illustrations of Antonio Ramírez Collado, bringing together in Blake-esque style mysticism, anatomy, and ideas born of research into early Christian gnostics, that serve as the root from which that music is sprung. Instrumental in its entirety and including a reprint of the article that ties the visuals and audio together and was apparently the inspiration for exploring the subject to start with, its 43-minute run can obviously offer the listener a deeper dive than just the average collection of verse/chorus songs, and no doubt that’s the intention. Some pieces are minimal enough to barely be there at all, enough to emphasize every strum of a string, and others offer a distorted tonal weight that seems ready to interpret any number of psychedelic spiritual chaos processes. If you want to get weird, Ricardo Jiménez y Antonio Ramírez are way ahead of you. They might also be ahead of themselves, honestly, despite whatever temporal paradox that implies.
Tracks like “Leaves,” “Blood Boils Hot,” and “Thunder” still rock out a pretty heavy classic blues rock vibe, but Swedish outfit Children of the Sün — as the title Roots would imply in following-up their 2019 debut, Flowers (review here) — seem to dig deeper into atmospheric expression, emotive melodies and patience of craft in the 13-track/44-minute offering. From the the mellow noodling of “Reflection” at the start, a piano-led foreshadow for “Eden” later on, to the acoustic-till-it-ain’t “Man in the Moon” later on, the spirit of Roots feels somewhere between days gone by and days to come and therefore must be the present, strutting accordingly on “The Soul” and making a pure vocal showcase for Josefina Berglund Ekholm, on which she shines as one has come to expect. There are moments where the vocals feel disconnected from the instrumental portions of the songs, but where they go, they go organically.
Is that flute on “Planexit,” the opener and longest track (immediate points), on Planexit, the latest outing from London-based grunge-informed heavy rockers Desert Clouds? It could well be, and after the somewhat bleaker progression of the riffs prior, that escape into melody comes across as well-placed. The band are likewise unafraid to pull off atmospheric Nick Cave-style storytelling in “Wheelchair” and more broodingly progressive fare in “Deceivers,” leaving the relatively brief “Revolutionary Lies” to rest somewhere between Southern heavy, early ’90s melodicism and a modern production. Throughout the 45-minute LP, the band swap out various structural ideologies, and while I can’t help be immersed in the groove and bassline of “Deceivers,” the linear build and receding of the penultimate “Pearl Marmalade” feels no less essential to the impact of the record overall. Behold a band who have found their niche and set themselves to the task of refining its parameters. As ever, it works because songwriting and performance are both right on.
Comprised of Clement Pineau (drums, kamele n’goni, vocals, percussion), Idriss Besselievre (vocals, guitar, sanxian), Paul Adamczuk (bass/guitar, keyboard) and Margot GuilbertGondhawa bring forth a heavy psychedelic cultural sphere throughout the still-digestible six tracks and 37 minutes of Käampâla, with the French trio’s penchant for including instrumentation from Africa or Asia alongside the more traditional guitar, bass, drums, keys and vocals resulting in a lush but natural feeling psychedelia that seems to be all the more open for their readiness to jam outside whatever box expectation might put them in. The title-track feels like Mideastern prog, while the subsequent “Assid Bubu” shreds out an echoing lead over a slow-roller of a stoner-jam nod. Their willingness to dance is a strength, ultimately, and their inclusion of these arrangement elements, including percussion, comes across as more than dabbling in world music. They’re not the first to look beyond their effects pedals in manifesting psych rock, but there’s not a lot out there that sounds like this.
Posted in Radio on September 17th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I try really hard not to make these shows suck. I do. And I think I’m mostly successful in that endeavor, but I tried extra hard this time. With my voice tracks as well as the playlist, which is almost entirely new music apart from the Orange Goblin and Mars Red Sky songs. I wanted to put a little life in my voice and I hope I managed to do so. I know last ep was a special consideration, with the death of Eric Wagner and all, but I’m not trying to be the most softspoken guy on Gimme Metal or anything. I just want to play music that isn’t necessarily aggro all the time. I’m actually pretty excited generally about doing so.
Tried to show that a little bit more. Nobody said anything to me about it or anything. I highly doubt anyone gives a crap. As long as I’m not doing like three-song shows with no voiceovers, Gimme seems content enough to let me do me. But just for myself, I wanted to hopefully convey a little bit of how much I enjoy talking about and sharing music. That’s the point of the whole thing.
Thanks for listening if you do and/or reading. I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 09.17.21
Crystal Spiders
Septix
Morieris
Canyyn
Crush Your Bones
Canyyn
Orange Goblin
Cities of Frost
Healing Through Fire
VT
Sonolith
Star Worshipers
Voidscapes
ASTRO CONstruct
Hand Against the Solar Winds
Tales of Cosmic Journeys
Slowshine
Living Light
Living Light
EMBR
Born
1021
Vokonis
Null & Void
Null & Void
VT
Floored Faces
Shoot the Ground
Kool Hangs
Carcaňo
Riding Space Elephants
By Order of the Green Goddess
Malady
Dyadi
Ainavihantaa
River Flows Reverse
Final Run
When River Flows Reverse
Gondhawa
Raba Dishka
Käampâla
Mars Red Sky
Crazy Hearth
The Task Eternal
Terminus
The Falcon
The Silent Bell Toll
Djiin
Black Circus
Meandering Soul
VT
Negură Bunget
Brad
Zau
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Oct. 1 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
