Expect to come away from The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness nursing a very sore head indeed.
It’s weird what industrial quantities of drugs will do for a man, depending on where and when he’s doing the imbibing. On the one hand, Gruff Rhys’ collaboration with Brazilian VCR repairman and peacenik Tony Da Gatorra works as a casually improvised celebration of the unifying power of drugs and rampant eccentricity. On the other, it’s more like the reverse of that; an existentially challenged piece that might easily’ve been subtitled Drugs And Their Proper Sociological Context.
Not knowing the specifics of either artist’s substance intake for sure, you’ll have to excuse our presumptions on this one. But you can imagine how, for an artist schooled in the post-flower power, post-ideological West, a years-long predilection for psychoactives might shepherd the visionary instinct into the sort of habitually ironic, musically schizophrenic zones Gruff Rhys charts in his output with Super Furry Animals. But for Tony Da Gatorra, an ageing hippy outsider resident in Sao Paulo, revolutionary zeal is a still-living memory that shapes and gives force to his agit-surrealist MO. He’s like Alan Vega crossed with Che Guevara, only much better at telling you what’s up with your knackered DVD player.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music