Planam / Italy / 2013
Ghedalia Tazartes brings his inventive fusion of Pan-African and Asian vocal traditions to the Gol quartet’s sprawling landscape of sound—a terrain shaped from bluesy stomps and decadent noise rites performed on electric mandoline, Jew’s harp, Janotron, flutes, electric and bass guitar, and layers of electronics.
At moments, their music recalls the wild offspring of Captain Beefheart, as if conceived in a Moroccan commune and left to evolve in the mountains; at others, it feels like the missing evolutionary step between The Sunburned Hand of the Man and Nurse With Wound. The result is a gloriously chaotic explosion of global textures and avant-rock energy that makes much of today’s psychedelic scene seem as watered down as a homeopathic dose.