Guapo

Guapo are a force to be rekond with.

I first saw them play in the small upstairs room of Cork’s Fred Zepplins in 2001, an utterly mind-shatteringly good gig.  The bass player and drummer played four sheets to the wind for a total of eight people, eight surprised people.  Samples of Cantonese Military chants mesmerized over bass loops, percussive sounds looped from the imput jack, hard ballsy bass lines and intricate stop/start start again jazz styled drumming with traces of military rolls and the drummer constantly verging on the edge of the unfathomable.  Truly great.  It changed my whole perception of music, awakened me momentarily to a world of unlimited possibilities.

So great was that initial impact that over the years I kept searching for them in record shops, and online. Stupidly not believing that they had taken in another member, I thus missed out on their later albums until 2008.  Missed out on the many transformations, and sure that no music could compare to that one pure glimpse.  After getting my hands on a copy of “Black Oni” the spell was recast.  In 2009 I made up for my infraction by seeing them play twice in as many months.

The Sonic City Festival in Kortrijk, Belgium was an ideal setting to get reacquainted them.  A small venue, and despite them not playing in the midst of the crowd, shoulders gathered around them on the floor, equally as transfixing as the first.  It was a break from the earlier more aggressive sound of Hirohito, since then they had progressed into new territories and blended the noisier sensibilities of dark jazz from earlier recordings into a hybrid 70’s prog/zeuhl inspired animal that had traces of minimalist composers thrown in for good measure. I was once again caught in their world, though this one had reformed itself.   Morphed into something of grace and danger.  The addition of Keys and Guitar, though subtle, were enough to change the attitude from an animalistic primordial power, to an entire world held tenuously in the balance of creation and utter annihilation.  The newest album “Elixirs” was a more gentle beast than than their breakthrough “Five Suns” which was the first album with multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan.  That night in Kortrijk they played in a haunted grace, aggressive bass sounds, heart pounding drum rhythms coursing the flow into cyclical patterns of regeneration, otherworldly Keys, the glitter suits, and sense of the theatrical only fuelled this sense of wonder.

The Roadburn festval in Tillburg, proved a harder crowd to win over than the Belgian or Irish, but they captivated the late-night-festival goers with another mind melting maelstrom which ended in a hypnotic tune that stayed in my head for a least a six month period, dogging my waking mind.

Guapo, yes please.