Chilly Gonzales - Gonzo (1LP)

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 (Ron Jeremy, Marie Kondo, Genghis Khan and Phillip Glass to cite a few) the songs that made it to the new album 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 for Gonzo. 

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.