GONZO

After 12 years of instrumental albums (ranging from a pair of Solo Pianos, chamber music, collaborative albums with Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker and Plastikman and even a best-selling Christmas record), Chilly Gonzales has a lot to get off his chest. The notebooks that sat unfilled since 2011's orchestral rap opus, The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales, started to fill up again in early 2022 after ending a lengthy decade of psychoanalysis. Coincidence? Hardly. Behind the wordplay and name-dropping, the songs that made it to Gonzo reveal an ongoing tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness and finally, gratitude. The tension between creativity and commerce also continues to be a career-long exploration. But is this truly a rap album? Instrumental pieces such as the Stravinsky-esque Fidelio or the tearjerking Eau de Cologne will remind listeners of Gonzo's extravagant musical genius persona, as the words and rhymes from previous verses settle into their ears.