gonjaeflyerfull-1

In pairing with L.A. producer Gaslamp Killer, Gonjasufi has found a powerful outlet for his otherworldly strain of singing. Together they’ve created A Sufi and a Killer, one of the most fascinating slabs of hallucinogenic head-nod music to arise from Southern California’s post-hip-hop vanguard. Unlike the digital bleeps and squelches of SoCal contemporaries FlyLo and Nosaj Thing, however, Gaslamp Killer and Gonjasufi draw from their hip-hop background to create an LP that could as easily fit on the Stones Throw roster as well as it does IDM-centric Warp. The beats knock, but for every moment of b-boy-friendly atmosphere, there’s another moment– or a simultaneous one– that makes like 21st century acid rock.

Gonjasufi’s vocals are both haunting and haunted, coolly assertive yet frequently fixated on mortal matters, and they bleed vividly through Gaslamp’s corroded analog wall of zero-fi psychedelic noise. The results are stark: Brooding, bad-trip laments (“Kobwebz”), a doo-wop number punctuated by spacey twang (“Duet”), a warping of the blues (“Ageing”). Even the more straightforward stuff has a grimy quality to it, particularly the heavy soul of “Change”, the bar-jazz tension of “Advice”, and the woozy “Kowboys & Indians” with its Eastern vocals looped against a rust-covered revision of club rap beats circa 2003.

– Pitchfork