It’s actually 17 years since the last proper Reynols album, so Gona Rubian Ranesa probably meets the unspecific criteria of a comeback album. It’s sometimes sad to see formerly bristling projects and personalities fail to get into gear as they try to recapture past glories. Sometimes the moment has truly gone…
However, any such concerns are obliterated instantly in this absolutely brain melting 4 track monster by these Argentinean space travellers. The opener Cameso Cator Sitero is a 13-minute corkscrew ride through psychedelic rock sludge, rolling around the stereo image, stuttering around a motif that eventually blossoms into no less than a chopped and sliced Ode to Joy by Beethoven.
While this could have been a group slowly dusting themselves down, the whole track manages to whip up instant mayhem. Perversely, it’s ideal as a primer for anyone new to the whole singular approach of Anla Courtis, Roberto Conlazo and Pacu Conlazo and wonderfully enigmatic front man Miguel Tomasin.
The second track Lintiri Teperoli drifts into view with organ patterns and drumming like a studio sketch from A Saucerful of Secrets, complete with Tomasin’s spiralling space whispers. Acotan Silago Foli continues the overall drift as elements slowly gather, elevate and intermingle…
The closer, Corlo Saturu snaps backing into a busier slobbering grooving mess like some studio ceremony has just exploded. Flute scribbles around, wrapped in delicate feedback, like we are flies on the wall as Tangerine Dream burned their out-of-character masterpiece, Electronic Meditation, to tape. Eventually lysergic guitar forms out of the shitstorm teasing lines and half obliterated logic. 13 minutes of gloriously and furiously thrashing bliss heading absolutely nowhere.
As an overall listening experience and one we have spun loud and repeatedly at OBLADADA Gona Rubian Ranesa’s strength comes in the form of the two monsters that bookend this release. Taken together, they form a psychoactive spore infested bread to the more formless tracks encased within. These two middle tracks, however, are far from a filler. They offer a zero-gravity sanctuary of sorts, a spot in the shade after the twin fireballs that begin and end this album.
Gona Rubian Ranesa ultimately draws a Venn diagram that sucks in the very best mutant strains, footprints and influences from all the true pioneers of bristling late 60’s and early 70’s European rock. The trick here though is none of this sounds simply like copy and paste derivations but something beaming with creativity and positivity. It’s crazy and abrasive but somehow always completely warm and welcoming.
It’s great to see these spacemen are back – a joy indeed.
Gona Rubian Ranesa is out now on Outlier Communications on vinyl and digital
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