Tell me what I need to know about Gigi Masin

Bit off topic but Diego Herrera (Suzanne Kraft) was also in a really good band called Pharaohs who out some great records like the album In Oeland on Mark Barrott's International Feel label. Lush neo-tropical sounds but quite uptempo - kind of a (Japanese) Mariah vibe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caoUAfVO2Ys

On more of a Gigi tip, I've really been enjoying the album La Calle Roja by Pablo Color which came out last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTgUQ_Sawag

Missum is indeed just utterly beautiful, even when not hungover. I totally get the Lewis comparison Boxedjoy, and am glad you dished it out.

My rockist stan is looking for a name for this kind of stuff. New Age isn't cutting it. I'm cautiously distancing myself from it but my unconscious just barked 'Digital Pastoral' at me.

I like Haunted Weather but I think Toop would barf.

nu age

beach synth

my playlist of this stuff is called Hungover At Yoga

Yeah that Pablo Color album is super nice!!

A lot of this music makes me think of the events that Labradford curated in London way back when under the banner 'Festival of Dritfing' and you'd get electronic stuff ranging from Eno ambient to dub techno from Pole but also textural guitar-based acts like Durutti Column and David Pajo and John Martyn. Gigi Masin feels like a Mediterranean extension of that, but I've come to think of them all basically as ~ d r i f t w a v e ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuHsXcmd6gg

the whole satoshi & makoto album is incredible, but this track in particular is all time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4kfGw7agMg

the e ruscha v album from a few years ago also fits this vibe

not quite as smooth and effortless though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls2F59qCKmA

wilson tanner - 69. the more recent II is good as well, but i go back to 69 more. i had a pretty memorable experience staring at a pillow made out of an old sweater to this album while my mind was quite altered

i mean, pillows are amazing, makes sense

yeah there’s a few tracks on that first Wilson Tanner that just kill me

relatedly, the last Eleventeen Eston album (By The Water is really nice

I love that Lawrence quote where he’s all “I just want to spend all day in a dreamy haze staring at beautiful album covers”

a couple more essential albums in this vein:

wolf mueller & cass - the sound of the glades (the title track is an incredible slow-build prog ambient journey)
art wilson - overworld (aka andras fox, was composed for a contemporary dance piece and the sun signs of the dancers involved are listed on the sleeve)

I'm listening to Suzanne Kraft's Talk from Home and it just struck me that one of the missing pieces in this thread is Rothko. Flatiron, in all its spreading, plangent beauty is pure Rothko.

Plangent is one of those words that needs to be banned from music criticism but sometimes it's the only word for the job.

Thanks for all the recommendations. I was listening to Jonny Nash's RA mix yesterday and that would fit in with this vibe. It's all his own work, including a collab with ol' Gigi himself

Very thankful Gigi was one of the very last shows I saw before the pandemic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BE9jXUSreQ

fools - source

new one on music from memory with a gorgeous music video

How was Gigi when you saw him Evan? The one time I saw him was a laptop performance in an empty and oppressive-feeling venue and I found it somewhat hard to engage with

He was fantastic! Yeah you need the ideal space to engage for sure. I saw him here:

https://www.svconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Public-Records-4-726x484.jpg

...which helped

cor look at those speakers!

Is that public records?

yes!

Great room, I hope they manage to reopen OK

Agreed, it seems they're keeping active with their online presence so hopefully things are generally alright behind the scenes.

But yeah Gigi sounded great there and he was super nice.

Definitely my favorite artist in this scene. He walks the line between calm pensive / moody so well; other musicians often just go full mopey doctor-drama-theme-music when they try to do the same. He has a good taste for emotional melodies while at the same time not sounding too gloomy. But for that reason his tunes stick better to me than most of the music in this genre. I feel like that's why he stands out.

late to the party here but spent a lot of time this year listening to both Gaussian Curve albums wandering a pretty isolated beach town and I prefer Clouds over The Distance by a small margin. Both are lovely but "Ride" and "Impossible Island" are hard to beat. "Suspended Motion" is incredible though.

yes I would like one late pass on these Gaussian Curve albums, please

I made a post on Instagram yesterday gushing over Clouds and Gigi commented that we might get a new Gaussian something (album?) at some point

"Thanks!! A lot!.. Gaussians? they could come back suddenly.. who knows?! 😎"

So, that's awesome. Maybe this was known but it's news to me.

Paolo mentioned this over on the ambient thread but think it'd fit here. Romeo Poirier - Hotel Nota. Lots of warm bubbly glitch, the overall aesthetic of which sorts of edges into Masin territory at times.

https://sferic.bandcamp.com/album/hotel-nota

calypso is crazy good. can't believe it took me this long to get to it. he really is one of a kind.

My favorite album of the year

I wouldn't have got through 2020 without Gigi Masin but it wasn't Calypso I was listening to

That's fine but do you not like Calypso?

I'm not answering for boxedjoy but I will say I typically get more out of Gaussian Curve than Gigi solo

hard disagree. i like gaussian curve a lot but i think his solo material is on another level. his new album doesn't throw out a welcome mat, it's kinda restless overall and is very much in a high-mid register eq-wise but it's such a rich, tense bridge between ambient concepts and experimental / jazz facility w/ the kind of elegant, intuitive phrasing that makes his music so compelling, i still think he's head and shoulders above the genre he's sort of given birth to over the past decade.

My favorite album of the year

― Evan, Saturday, December 26, 2020 4:10 AM (seventeen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol something i agree with Evan about ;)

!!! Is this surprising?

Winky face acknowledged however am I known for my dumb opinions?

no no i just disagree with you sometimes on those dang politics threads

sorry didn't mean to be weird

Oh! I sometimes post on those, and if so it’s usually a dumb joke or shitpost.

well anyway calypso is cosmic bliss and kind of mysterious and sad and it's perfect imo. one thing that comes to mind, apropos of not much, and i don't mean to be *that guy*, but i feel like people might not realize gigi has experimental music bona fides, has collaborated with people like charles hayward, and that's kind of part and parcel with with his solo work too... feel like that comes through more on this album idk.

Sorry for making you feel weird. It was just a mini-rollercoaster for me. "I'm finally established enough here after 11 years to have recognizable opinions?? Wow neat because I've never really felt a par-...oh I see he is simply confusing me with someone else."

Anyway, I agree he has experimental credentials that contribute value to his music, but I'm not sure it's an entirely unique feature vs. other artists that do the same (many of which are also on the wonderful MFM label as a broad example). To me it's actually his moving melodies that help him stand out among that pack of minimal experimental musicians, not the other way around (AKA experimentation making him stand out among ambient artists).

http://offtherecord.net/off-the-record-mix-series-20-gigi-masin/

Ha... looks like a mistake in the formatting but it reads as if Gigi passive aggressively pivots and asks himself about new solo music in the middle of answering about the prospect of new Gaussian Curve material.

Thanks for sharing though I was just yesterday wondering what might be coming next from him.

I shoulda put bjork and to rococo rot have sampled him and he sounds like Blue Nile in the title to get people to post.

― jaxon, Friday, July 22, 2011 2:26 PM (nine years ago)

i'm glad i did a quick command+F before posting! spotify "recommended" the to rococo rot song, which led me on a quick search to see who else had sampled "clouds" (1989?) and who was the first. to rococo rot was apparently the first (1999), and it's much more of a blantant rip than bjork's. bjork's sounds vaguely inspired by it. the to rococo rot song is more on the Vanilla Ice side of sampling practice