DJ and sound artist Gonçalo F Cardoso returns under his GONZO moniker to do some creeping, and to shake things up a bit via his very own musique concrete, experimental electronic collage method. Cardoso operates the DISCREPENT LABEL, and has done so for several years now, out of London. Those familiar with that adventurous label (check out the upcoming KINK GONG stuff!) will know to expect musical approaches far afield of anything that could be construed as ordinary; openly offering up a (very) loose label thematic of the clashing… and merging of genres & music cultures.
The most recent GONZO tape (Cardoso also performs as PAPILLON, and as part of the wonderfully monikered group HAIR & TREASURE) comes quite naturally from DISCREPENT. It is called ARK EULOGY and it is comprised of two long washes of intersecting sounds, one upon each side. A darkness lingers over these sounds, a purposeful unease, and a cause for alarm. But it is only music (right?). As can be heard in the excerpt below, this music is a construction (and at times deconstruction) of interlocking sampled loops of different lengths, and from different sources. There is also no doubt acoustic & electronic accompaniment intermingled throughout that was recorded especially for the occasion of this tape (or at least utilized especially for this tape). I can’t find any evidence about Gonçalo F Cardoso’s working process online however, so we’ll have to leave such ideas as pure speculation for now. What draws me to GONZO, besides the badass name is (this GONZO officially shows up on discogs as GONZO (69), as in the 69th artist entered into their system using the GONZO name. I shit you not.) is the strange space that the artist’s music occupies. Somewhere in a hazy nether region on one outer edge near to fellow mystical/ industrial Europeans like FATHER MURPHY, on another far edge neighboring the serious, and seriously weird electronics of Providence’s BROWN RECLUSE ALPHA, and on yet another (how many edges does this damn music have?!) perhaps abutting the tape and electronic convergence of Massachusetts own ARKM FOAM (that’s 3 edges, so I guess this music is a triangle… of some sort). Samples used here are apparently culled from “dwelling and scavenging the depths of holy relics, ‘arkeological’ artefacts and associated deities.” That means something surely. But not to me. Any mystery that is available for surrounding the haunting, and strange music that is found here just adds to the overall. So let’s just leave it at that. I’d rather not know anyway. Now please pardon me as I turn down the lights, turn of this music, and take a ride upon a wafting, phantasmagoric roller coaster, shifting uneasily back and forth between cocoon-like warmth and stability, and and the early stages of unholy terror.
