GONJASUFI “A SUFI AND A KILLER“

  • Lost in the desert, looking through a  kaleidoscope, searching for directions, while tripping on acid, may not be the best way to find your way out, but it will certainly help you achieve a spiritual inward journey, and that’s exactly the sort of mystic experience, Gonjasufi, born Sumach Ecks, aka Sumach Valentine, first album “A Sufi And A Killer“, another fine Warp release, does to you. Imagine yourself, soulless in the immensity of the desert, alone with ancestor’s spirits, starved and dehydrated, but at the same time stuffed with hallucinations and visions, drunk from the voices in your head, burning under the scorching sun, or shivering in the emptiness of the night, torn away from reality by the hypnotic landscape, vacillating between consciousness and unconsciousness, slowly losing your mind to madness, starring at the sky passing by, while traveling through time and space, but most of all feeling for the first time in complete symbioses with the whole cosmos, and you are just about there. The record opens its spiritual path with an untitled track of shamanic chants, like an incantation for a rite of passage, almost in order for the rest of the songs to deliver their soulful messages, along with haunting and haunted vocals by high priest Sufi, turning the all experience into a near religious ceremony. The further you advance in the listening, the further you loose yourself into the atmospheric soundscape of lo-fi noisy electronica, dusted hip-hop beats, and vintage samples created by The Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus ["Ancestors"], and Mainframe ["Holidays"/"Candylane"]. Punch drunk by those often complexed psychedelic loops, the eardrums starve for emptiness and silence, only for the dehydrated, or scorching voice of Ecks to creep in, and to leave you shivering under such stellar compositions. Deprived from reality by this hypnotic chaos, alternating between shadows and lights or traveling through past and present ["Sheep", "She's Gone", "Duet"...], sometimes accompanied by the vibes of ancient Eastern nomad tribes ["Kobwebz", "Kowboyz And Indians", "Klowds"...], at others haunted by blues ghosts ["Ageing"], or jamming alongside jazz ancestors ["Advice"], and even feeling reminiscences of The Stooges ["SuzieQ"], you are left inert in this vortex of confusion with all your senses eluding you. Whether or not the album title as a double meaning, apart from the karma significance, simply a shorter version for “GonjaSufi And The Gaslamp Killer“, it’s emphasize and symbolize perfectly the harmony achieved by both artists to deliver such a truly unique vision. It also confirms the GLK as one of the crucial figure to recently emerge from the Music scene.
  • “If anything I would pray that people find the ability to find themselves in the music.” – Gonjasufi. In the contrary i would highly recommend that you loose yourself in it, and come out experienced!
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