Chilly Gonzales - Gonzo

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1010 Wien

 

After 12 years of instrumental albums, ranging from the "Solo Piano Trilogy," the first of which turns 20 this year, to collaborative albums with Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker, and Plastikman, to the best-selling Christmas record and the TV special "A Very Chilly Christmas," Chilly Gonzales has a lot under his belt. In 2023, Gonzo wrote his first album in the language of Molière and Bangalter, "French Kiss."

In 2024, the writer and rapper struck a more serious tone on his eponymous album, Gonzo.

Perhaps rhyming is the tool and words as weapons are the recipe.

With his first single, "F*ck Wagner," Gonzo takes on cancel culture and tackles the current question head-on:

"Should we separate the artist from the work?"

Chilly Gonzales raps about monstrous, historical, and contemporary figures from Wagner to Kanye, whose cultural contribution is nonetheless undeniable. All of this raw, unfiltered, head-on, and without losing his sense of melody.

The notebooks, empty since 2011's orchestral rap opus "The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales," began to fill up again in early 2022, after a long decade of psychoanalysis had ended. A coincidence? Hardly.

Behind the wordplay and name-dropping (Ron Jeremy, Marie Kondo, Genghis Khan, and Phillip Glass, to name a few), the songs that made it onto the new album "Gonzo" reveal a constant tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness, and ultimately, gratitude. The tension between creativity and commerce continues to be a kind of exploration for Gonzo.

But is this really a rap album? Instrumental pieces like the Stravinsky-esque "Fidelio" or the tear-jerking "Eau de Cologne" remind the listener of Gonzo's extravagant "musical genius" personality, while the words and rhymes of the preceding verses become ingrained in the ear.

(Source: intermezzo.wien)