[review]
It is literally impossible not to fall under the spell of Demon, few albums can be considered so enjoyably haunting… Gazpacho’s 8th album is enchanting, captivating, sweetly unsettling, addictive, perfect. 4 tracks for a total of over 45 minutes of mesmerising music offering cinematic views and closing with “Death Room”, a 18.30-minute suite that requests at least 5 listenings a day. The story behind the whole concept of Demon is inspired by a manuscript contained various ramblings and diagrams which formed the basis of a diary, of sorts, of a man. He claimed to have discovered the source of what he called an evil presence in the world. This presence, ‘The Demon’, was an actual intelligent will, with no mercy and a desire for bad things to happen. The author wrote as if he had lived for thousands of years stalking this presence. So crazed were the writings that the document was donated to the Strahov Library in Prague, where it was thought it would be of interest to students of psychiatry. The thought of this mysterious figure that had lived through the ages, hunting the ‘Demon’, seemed like too good an idea not to write about.
Written over two years, the band have described Demon as the ‘most complicated and strange album Gazpacho has ever made’. As Tom described to us the whole album as “designed to be a trip through the thoughts of someone who claims to be stalking a Demon and it is a trip. It’s a soundtrack to a film you have to make yourself and if you’re up for it you’re in for a ride”… and he couldn’t be more right. The roots of the whole album are well planted in solid rock while it still offers moments of early-Arcade-Fire-like traditional folkloristic sounds; minor scales, gloomy pipe organs, accordions, crackled gramophones, classical pianos, violins, xylophones, harps, counter basses, distorted guitars and irresistible melodies complete the function. Demon is not only Gazpacho’s most mature album, where the band stretched themselves beyond conventionalism more than ever, it is one of the best things the music scene has been granted in the last 20 years.
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