GA'AN

One of those wonderful free albums out there for grabs by anyone in the know. Let me tell you about the parallels between Zeuhl and Chicago people! What? Nothing? Oh well, I must confess that I had never ever in my wildest dreams thought of mixing the two, - that is before I heard this band. Chicago and Zeuhl...

If you are a big fan of The Blair Witch Project - and keep wondering how the creepy forest witch would have sounded like - had she been properly interviewed, or maybe you are one of those who just think that she'd prefer doing a wee banjo ditty with accompanying vocals. Anyways - you should definitely check out this album! The female vocals here are nonsensical, ethereal, diabolic, beautiful like ice crystals and haunting like a night spent in a black swamp. In other words: Welcome to the long lost soundtrack to The Blair Witch Project! This girl can sing - and she does so with the power of your most recent nightmare - inching her way back into your subconsciousness.

Gothic emanations, brooding atmospheres, teutonic drumming, enormous sound sculptures and this blood-red line creeping through the heart of the record, even if the voices it contains are incomprehensible and obscure.

When Ga'an first got suggested for PA, there was a lot of discussion about what genre - which box to throw them into, and I believe both Krautrock and Zeuhl were candidates at the same time. Now to me personally, I don't care about the categorisation of either carrots or sheepdogs - I just want one of those to be orange and the other to be fluffy. Ga'an have got some serious worm like synthesizers going for them - twitching and bubbling beneath the narratives of the tracks, but overall I do find the propulsive energetic bass work that trots away like an angry farmer in cement boots - to flavour this outing in a decisively more French attitude - harking back to both Magma and Weidorje. Even so - Zeuhl can be psychedelic, and this album is certainly proof of that.

One thing I've been thinking about lately, is the way most music divides itself into smaller groups within the bands they are born in. Partners in crime - tomatoes and salt - lions and tigers. On this debut album though, it struck me like a ton of bricks. I mean, If you listen to the vocals here, and how they sensuously slip into the choir mellotron - you get the impression of a match made in heaven - or maybe hell for that matter. Which ever sounds most promising to you. There's just something magical about the Gregorian chant emanations of the mellotron together with those diabolic vocals, which makes me think that they were made for each other from the get go. Pure fate. It's the same way with the bass and drums, but maybe that's why we call them the rhythm section eh?

If you are sitting around doing nothing - wooing your dog, throwing salt at the tv, eating cheese in your speedos, picking your nose with a hammer or just plain bored out of your skull, - then pull yourself together man and go download this magnificent gothic psych Zeuhl album in a hurry, before the icecaps melt and I loose my temper!

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