#gonjasufi

Song of the Day

Side A - 00:00 - 01:00

Gonjasufi - Sheep

King Crimson - Court of the crimson king

US69 - A Spaced Oddity

Gaslamp Killer - She's coming

September - Ostavi Trag

David Axelrod - Holy Thursday

Lil Wayne - Dr Carter

Curtis Mayfield - Make Me Believe

Donny Hathaway - I hear voices

Side B - 01:00 - 02:00

Brigitte Fontaine - Moi Aussi

Monk Hughes & The Outer Realm - Keys

Sambo - The Little Things You Say

- A Ver Que Sale

Quarteto Em Cy - Zambi

Shivkumar - Raga Piloo

- Las Flute Des Mornes

Flying Lotus - Putty Boy

Shuggie Otis & Al Kooper - Bury My Body

LivE on WCSB 89.3 FM Cleveland

Callus Gonjasufi 2016, Warp (Bandcamp)

Gonjasufi was one of the hip finds of 2010, when his unclassifiable debut LP A Sufi and a Killer drew raves from the indie press. Flying Lotus was probably the hottest beatmaker in the world at the time, and he was at the centre of a Warp Records-affiliated scene that seemed poised to upend electronic music in the same way the Odd Future collective was shaking hip-hop’s mainstream. A Sufi and a Killer’s production was primarily helmed by Flying Lotus associate The Gaslamp Killer (with assists from Mainframe and FlyLo himself), and its scabby, phlegmy take on rap/psych rock/noise/whatever drew perplexed but positive comparisons to weirdos like Tom Waits and George Clinton.

That was as good as it really got for Gonjasufi though. He seems to have drifted out of FlyLo and Gaslamp Killer’s sphere (and the attention it brought) shortly after A Sufi and a Killer, and by his next release (2016’s Callus) he was back to producing his own music. (2012’s MU.ZZ.LE EP consisted of pre-ASaaK recordings.)  Although I haven’t checked out any interviews to confirm it, I suspect Gonjasufi grew weary of the attention/credit being paid to his starry collaborators and wanted to prove that he was the driving force behind the album that’d drawn such acclaim. The situation reminds me a bit of Cannibal Ox, the rap group forever defined by a classic collab with an iconic producer (The Cold Vein, with El-P) who went on to sporadically release plenty more good music to a diminishing cult audience.

Gonja’s 2016 effort Callus is basically a purely solo venture, aside from some guitar on a few tracks by Pearl Thompson (formerly of The Cure). Reviewers often describe Gonjasufi’s music as weedy, but Callus is more the kind of high you get from melting plastic: smoggy, a hot pulse in the forehead that will be a splitting headache later, staggering around in an interesting fashion while listening to a guy who sounds like George Clinton shooting smack in a tenement squat stairwell. It further confirms that Gonjasufi was the auteur of own sound—but also reveals how much more “outsider” his music is without the comparatively accessible sample-based beats provided by his collaborators (like ASaaK’s “Ancestors” or “Candylane”) to leaven his propensity for industrial gloom. While Gonja is clearly a spiritual man who seems to approach his music as if in a visionary trance, Callus makes for a pretty fraught psychic journey.

Despite its insularity, the LP covers a ton of ground. Opener “Your Maker” resembles an Afghan Whigs demo more than it does anything on FlyLo’s Brainfeeder label. It bleeds over into the murky trip-hop of “Maniac Depressant”; the breakcore-shaded “Afrikan Spaceship”; a thousand miles of bad dub vibes in two-minutes-and-forty-six of “Carolyn Shadows”; and finally “Ole Man Sufferah,” a doodle that sounds like post-hardcore drifting in from the next room while I wash my hair in the bathtub. Aside from the oozily sexy “Vinaigrette,” Callus isn’t an album where individual songs stand out much. On balance, it’s an album of very clangorous ambient music.

I hadn’t heard mention of Gonjasufi in quite a while, and I don’t think he’s put out anything since a 2019 DJ mix for Warp’s thirtieth anniversary. (It likely hasn’t helped that The Gaslamp Killer became embroiled in rape allegations in 2017, which limited the tenth anniversary hype cycle that A Sufi and a Killer might otherwise have enjoyed.) I did learn that Gonja had a hand in the production of Tanya Tagaq’s 2022 album Tongues, which strikes me as a great stylistic match. His IG posts suggest the pandemic has been tough on him and his people, so my fingers are crossed he’s able to get some new stuff out there soon.