GA'AN - Self-Titled

This album could just as easily be a lost krautrock classic that hasn't seen the light of day since the master tapes were locked away in the Amon Duul/Bader-Meinhoff compound. In reality GA'AN is from Chicago and initially released this collection on cassette only in 2009 before label captcha records made it available to the masses. Fitting in very nicely between the Tangerine Dream and mid-era Kraftwerk strains of german progressive music, GA'AN paints meditative soundscapes with angelic but repetitive and mantra-like female vocals, piles upon piles of mellotron, moog, and vintage synth tones, and driving yet incredibly tasteful percussion (sometimes fill-heavy but never scattershot or overplayed). Bass guitar rounds out some of the thicker, more driving sections, but is often played in the melodic pocket and blended with the almost choral nature of multiple synthesizers. The vocals at times act as almost a touchstone or backbone to songs that allow flights of fancy by the other instruments. Again this is incredibly meditative music, song structures emerge from and disappear into the miasma of whirling keys and grooving percussion. This is what you expect to hear in the moments after you trip over a coven performing a sacrifice in the woods, between getting caught and being chased to your own death. A beautiful listen that acts as background doing-homework type stimuli, or as tripping-yr-balls-off-man-this-is-amazing album that never gets old. Smoke a fat one, close your eyes, and sink into this album. Headphones recommended. 

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