guapo - elixirs

.:: Three years have passed since “Black Oni”. Four years since “Five Suns”(Cuneiform Records). The new album by Guapo is finally here and thus concludes the recondite triptych they set out to accomplish. Flux is not uncommon here, every record taking on new musical hues and offering disparate ideas and perspectives. However an upheaval in the line-up, which of recent years has been anchored by the trio of Daniel O’Sullivan, Matthew Thompson and David Smith, triggered a change in course when Thompson left the band just prior to the release of Black Oni in 2005.

The house of the idealist is teeming with the most unlikely of treasures. Fairies, jewelled turtles, lindworms and moon worshipping plants are but a few residents. But in these fragments contain a cognitive universe propelled by an unspoken and unheard pantheon. Guapo give voice to this realm, where the mystical philosophies of Huysmans, Kircher, Conan Doyle, Hyltén-Cavallius and many others are used as facilitators and indeed, guardians for the music conceived on “Elixirs”.

As a result, Elixirs transcends any musical antecedents that Guapo have been acknowledged for in the past. Instead, the music here explores the outer-most regions of psychedelic composition. Flickers of Popol Vuh, This Heat, Magma, Third Ear Band, Moondog and early 70’s Miles Davis are present here as over-arching themes are morphed and mined through serpentine asymmetrical structures. Chiming rounds and canons swim through a sapphirine ocean of polyrhythmic mantra. All sullenly overcast with compositions so mercurial, the paths you can take are infinite.

The dense orchestration and finespun virtuosity (seamlessly captured by engineer / producer Antti Uusimaki) create a richness previously hinted at but never fully realized until now. On “Elixirs” Guapo have opened a secret vault of treasures where jewels of sulphurous green and ashen blue blossom dwell. Where springs of fire feverishly burst through a vista of golden chrysoberyls. Let the ceremony commence.


download: guapo - elixirs

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