So, here I am, going for one of my morning/afternoon walks in the middle of January, with my reviewing iPod Touch in hands in the middle of my neighbourhood in a cool day which fits my comfort zone, listening to this band that is like a brewing stir of new wave, post-punk, and krautrock on all fours. That band is JeGong. Since their formation started during the pandemic in 2020, the line-up is a duo consisting of Reto Mader (Sum of R, Ural Umbo) and Dahm Majuri Cipolla (Mono, Watter). Their music explores the industrial parts of the sounds from the Berlin School of Music with its true cosmic force and laying down the law by proving themselves they can take it to a whole other world that is beyond your wildest dreams.
Their latest album on the Pelagic label is Gomi Kuzu Can. Following it up to their 2023 release The Complex Inbetween, their third release showcases the late ‘70s, early ‘80s vibration in the heart of Germany and Britain with the spirits of Ultravox, NEU, Suicide, Tangerine Dream, Faust, and Kraftwerk into a small blender and creating this pounding vibe, waiting to come at you in a nano second.
The credentials on Gomi Kuzu Can are harder and more passionate to get the energy juice flowing in the compositions they put on here. There is the Gothic tragic story on ‘Whatever Happened to Gene Bisi?’ Even more like a mournful organ, electronic drum pattern and the singing about the mystery behind the character’s death, adds in the questions and answers behind the killing.
There’s also the avant-musique atmosphere flowing into the void behind tracks such as ‘Sister’, nods to the Velvet Underground and the Ultima Thule-era from Froese on ‘Contortion’ and sweeping the murdered weapon with its fuzz bass, electronic drum patterns with ‘Downed’. ‘Parallel Tracks’ enters the kind of Post-Punk ‘80s vibe with This Mortal Coil’s inhabitation as if they had written this composition for the 2025 video game from Bloober Team, Cronos: The New Dawn.
But it’s the opening track ‘Golden Hairs Goes Back to Japan’ that will make you think of Kraftwerk with its morse code transmission, courtesy of sending transcriptions from the wire with its synths and Joy Division motif behind the ‘Outright Wolf Medicines’ that comes out of nowhere. They know their source material when it comes to the incredible music that was happening in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s.
Gomi Kuzu Can feels like a sonic turned avant-garde flower ready to bloom at any second with raw power and eruptive sequences coming out of nowhere. And while JeGong have kept the spirits of the krautrock and post-rock genre alive, it’s time to give them their own film or game score to work on in a nanosecond.
