Chilly Gonzales - Gonzo (CD)

After 12 years of instrumental albums (ranging from a pair of solo pianos, chamber music, collaborative albums with Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker and Plastikman and even a best-selling Christmas record), Chilly Gonzales has a lot to get off his chest.

The notebooks that sat unfilled since 2011's orchestral rap opus The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales started to fill up again in early 2022 after ending a lengthy decade of psychoanalysis. Coincidence? Hardly.

Behind the wordplay and name-dropping (Ron Jeremy, Marie Kondo, Genghis Khan and Phillip Glass to cite a few) the songs that made it to the new album Gonzo reveal an ongoing tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness and finally, gratitude. The tension between creativity and commerce also continues to be a career-long exploration for Gonzo.

But is this truly a rap album? Instrumental pieces such as the Stravinsky-esque Fidelio or the tearjerking Eau de Cologne will remind listeners of Gonzo's extravagant "musical genius" persona, as the words and rhymes from previous verses settle into their ears.

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Tracklist:

1. Gonzo
2. Surfing the Crowd
3. High as a Kite
4. Fidelio
5. Open the Kimono [feat. Bruiser Wolf]
6. Neoclassical Massacre
7. Cadenza
8. F*CK WAGNER
9. Eau de Cologne
10. Poem