Chilly Gonzales | Jazz Sabbath

After 12 years of instrumental albums, from the "Solo Piano Trilogy", the first of which turns 20 this year, to collaborative albums with Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker and Plastikman, to the best-selling Christmas record and the TV special "A Very Chilly Christmas", Chilly Gonzales has a lot on his plate. In 2023, Gonzo wrote his first album in the language of Molière and Bangalter, "French Kiss".
In 2024, the writer and rapper struck a more serious tone on his eponymous album Gonzo.
Perhaps rhyming is the means & words as a kind of weapon is the recipe.
With the first single "F*ck Wagner", Gonzo takes on cancel culture and tackles the current issue head on:
"Should we separate the artist and the work?" Chilly Gonzales raps about monstrous, historical and contemporary figures from Wagner to Kanye, whose cultural contribution is nonetheless undeniable. It's all raw, unfiltered, frontal and without losing his sense of melody.
The notebooks, which hadn't been filled since 2011's orchestral rap opus "The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales", began to fill up again in early 2022, after a long decade of psychoanalysis had come to an end. A coincidence? Hardly. Behind the wordplay and name-dropping (Ron Jeremy, Marie Kondo, Genghis Khan and Phillip Glass, to name but a few), the songs that made it onto the new album
"Gonzo" reveal a constant tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness and, ultimately, gratitude. The tension between creativity and commerce continues to be an exploration of sorts for Gonzo.
But is this really a rap album? Instrumentals like the Stravinsky-esque "Fidelio" or the tear-jerking "Eau de Cologne" remind the listener of Gonzo's flamboyant "musical genius" persona, while the words and rhymes of the preceding verses linger in the ear.

Instrumentation:

Chilly Gonzales piano, vocals

Taylor Savvy Bass

Joe Flory drums

Yannick Hiwat violin, synth

Jazz Sabbath