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Released on May 26, 2015 via Cuneiform Records
For twenty years Guapo have been relentlessly ploughing their own furrow through the weird-music landscape. Their long-form compositions often take up an entire album’s length and, aesthetically at least, are closely aligned to the zeuhl and RIO movements. Drummer Dave Smith is the only remaining founder member, having overseen numerous personnel shifts in those two decades. He is joined for the second consecutive release by Knifeworld’s Kavus Torabi and Emmet Elvin on guitar and keys and by James Sedwards on bass. Stability at last?
The de facto leader brings more than his copious percussive skills to the table. As a visual artist working in the field of sculpture he has honed the craft of creating form out of raw materials. This applies compositionally and also to the band itself as Torabi attests, “Dave tends to be the guy with whom the buck stops…the person who has a clear vision of what the group is”. It is that cohesion and singularity of purpose that sets Guapo apart from other purely instrumental acts – ego is subsumed, soloing is used only as the arrangement necessitates and each individual, including the listener, is assimilated into the collective consciousness. Emmet Elvin, himself an accomplished painter, together with Smith imbues the music with a near-synesthetic sense of colour and shape.
Elvin’s wonky-sounding breathy organ announces the 43-minute piece. Ascending bass notes and cymbal washes enhance the harmonic and rhythmic tension until the full force of the quartet escapes its shackles at the 2-minute mark and the hallucinatory vision quest begins.
The album title is a Huxley coinage for opening the ‘doors of perception’, a reference to the peyote-fuelled rituals of Native Americans or perhaps the coyote-filled desert dream that constitutes Homer’s odyssey after ingesting a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper at Springfield’s Annual Chili Cook-Off. Whichever route you choose is fraught with danger. Sedwards’ bass threatens. When it locks in with Smith’s mercurial drumming the closest comparison is to Magma at their most intense. As in the oeuvre of those French masters of zeuhl, repetition is used to infuriate and tantalise before the hormonal dam bursts and endorphins flood the senses in a physiological reaction.
On the subject of repetition, keen listeners will note the influence of New York minimalism. Steve Reich’s polyrhythms are clearly present while Philip Glass’s early distorted organ works are evoked in the first of the album’s three sections.
The staccato keyboard chords meet their resolution with a doozy of a guitar riff. Kavus Torabi’s distinctive style is more prominent than on 2013’s History of the Visitation. His wide-interval, string-skipping technique provides some memorable major-key light relief that is a menhir’s throw away from Spinal Tap’s ‘Stone’enge’. The whimsy is soon cast aside though by the heaviest unison discordance this side of Red-era King Crimson. When the riff is recapitulated at the album’s climax it is augmented and transformed into a more menacing beast. The little people of Salisbury Plain are back and this time they’re pissed.
To draw from Dave Smith’s medium, when appraising a sculpture you see it all in one moment. Music is aural sculpture that requires the fourth dimension to be experienced. It is only with time and with repeated listens that the form of Obscure Knowledge becomes apparent – the subtle details appear like staring at a Magic Eye poster, the variations on themes stand out and relief becomes discernible. While such effort is rewarded it’s not as hard work as it sounds. The first time I heard this piece was live, the whole shebang from start to finish. When I came to play the album I recognised complete sections of it wholesale. That, my friends, is the art of good composition – obfuscated complexity.
In yet another rotation of the revolving door James Sedwards has gone on to join Thurston Moore’s band and has been replaced for live duties by Thumpermonkey’s Sam Warren. If change is the only constant in the world of this enigmatic outfit then their achievement on Obscure Knowledge is all the more remarkable – creating a monument from ephemera and continuing to plough that furrow regardless of the terrain. Guapo are outstanding in their field.
