GA'AN

Named after the Sacred Mountain Spirits of the Apache people who are sent to teach people how to live in harmony, GA'AN is one of the stranger bands that has fallen into the zeuhl camp of progressive rock for eschewing any strong jazz connections and merging the style with extremely heady and psychedelic space rock. This band was formed in Chicago by Lindsay Powell (vocals, keyboards), Seth Sher (drums), Jeremiah Fisher (synthesiizers) and Jason Sublette (bass, synthesizers) and has recorded two albums. While this 2009 self-titled debut featured all four original members, the band's followup "Black Equus" found Fisher and Sublette moving on and the replacement of bassist / keyboardist Tyson Torstensen replaced both of them making the band a trio.

Owing as much inspiration to bands like the horror flick soundtrack masters Goblin or the electronic Kraut wizardry of Popol Vuh as it does to the zeuhl pioneers Magma, GA'AN crafted one of the most originally bizarre hybrids of psychedelic zeuhl rock that i've ever experienced. Hypnotic, ethereal and possibly drug induced in its making, GA'AN's unique style of Kraut-zeuhl very much evokes a spiritual force infiltrating the sound spectrum to deliver encoded messages of love and light and harmonic resonance in a world that has fallen woefully out of balance. The musical delivery is fairly straight forward in its simplistic martial procession in the vein of Magma with bouncing groovy bass run and energetic percussion throughout but kept light and elevated through the tapestry of synthesizer ambience that subtly oscillates through the album's six track run.

Lindsay Powell evokes the divine feminine aspects of nature that represent care and unconditional love through her siren calls of wordless utterances. The male members offer similar backing vocals. The keys often evoke a religious liturgy only more like a sermon of a psychedelic mushroom cult or some similarly minded break off group that exists in its own bubble of reality. Despite the rather pacifying nature of the entire affair, drummer Seth Sher delivers some of the most demanding percussive workouts akin to Christian Vander himself except on technical jazzy death metal mode as his fiery workouts offer the most surreal of contrast to the otherwise ethereal astral journey into the higher planes of the dream state. And let me not forget to mention Jason Sublette's extraordinary bass thumping skills as his relentless drive is as impressive as Jannick Top or the best of the zeuhl camp. Whereas some bands focus on virtuosity, GA'AN practices the art of restrain, endurance and repetitive cyclical craftsmanship.

This is pretty much an underground affair and will only appeal to the most adventurous seekers of true cosmic rock that evokes a trip to the spiritual world and back. The album was originally only released on cassette but has since been re-issued on vinyl and available as a digital download but still rather off the radar even for those into zeuhl and space rock. Still no CD version either. The only other act that comes close in matching this band's sound is the 70s space zeuhl act Archaïa which delivers a similar martial drive and synthesized trip-a-thon. While not as proficiently weird with the synthesizer action as that classic band, GA'AN nevertheless mastered the art of atmospheric overload where you are literally transported to an alternative reality and taken for an initiation of some sort. While Archaïa's music could be scary and down right freaky, GA'AN provides an escape to the angelic realm with the calming soothing vocal style of Lindsay Powell to keep you tethered to the Earthly realms.

The album also blurs the distinction between zeuhl and post-rock. I mean wasn't zeuhl sort of an early form of post-rock? Given the lack of jazzy elements here save the percussive gymnastics which are clustered into the proper zeuhl delivery system, the album comes off as a zeuhl space rock version of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Whatever you want to call this wild ride, it's utterly unique and quite addictive at the same time. It's almost like the angelic realms have dialed into your soul frequency and downloading a message of love in musical form!