The GB Album Club 049 - Perihelion by Sungazer

Duders! Welcome to the 49th edition of the Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club! Last week, we felt our feelings and we felt them hard with emo punk throwback Bless My Psyche by Sincere Engineer. This week, we're getting a little more experimental. A little jazzier. A little noted Youtuber-ier. Our album this week is Perihelion by Sungazer! This album was selected by our good friend @justin258, and you can listen with the links below:

Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/album/0wYXxaoJtXKBzZFDEjhNGL?si=152DbYCVSJuW5oj--Jq9xw

Apple Music:https://music.apple.com/us/album/perihelion/1586463484

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kADaNDZPbwG5CudzELD4280bD2RNQlHLg

The Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club! Every week, we pick an album at random from the pool we made in our Discord to listen to and discuss. Want in? Come on down!

I have one complaint about this album. It's not really even a complaint so much as bad timing. It's basically that I've heard similar albums to this one and I like what some of them are doing a little better. That's it.

I think most people would file this album under the genre of nu jazz, which, despite the amount of live instrumentation on this album, is basically "Let's play electronic music as if it were jazz, with jazz like arrangements and improvisation and so on." But really, I'm talking about the fusion of jazz and electronic music (and in this case, some other genres as well) to evoke a sense of scope and thus forge a connection to space and the cosmos. It's a line that starts with Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane, and in this case, the band I was thinking of a lot when I was listening to this was The Comet is Coming. (I've nearly submitted their album Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery every time a new cycle comes around.) When you compare them, Sungazer seems slightly less daring. Or at least, a little more reigned in.

But really, that's all I got. This album fucking rules.

Really, it was wrong of me to frame Perihelion as "Sungazer vs. The Comet is Coming." They're both doing similar things but have different ways of going about it. In Sungazer's case, they incorporate a lot more samples, they take a lot more cues from hip hop and pop, and they foreground different instrumentation as, unlike The Comet is Coming, they aren't centered around a master saxophonist. (Who recently gave up the saxophone. Long story.)

Moreover, what I find really impressive about Perihelion is the balance they're able to find between what some might consider tech-y arrangements (I don't) and unpredictability. Even though you're aware of the construction of what they're playing, I could never really tell where it was going. And moreover, it's really not that deep. There's an energy I really connected with I ate this shit up. I'm familiar with the lineage it's from, but it definitely holds up on its own merits.

Favorite Songs: "Macchina," "Perihelion," "Cytherean"