After 12 years of instrumental albums (ranging from a pair of Solo Pianos, chamber music, collaborative albums with Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker and Plastikman and even a best-selling Christmas record), Chilly Gonzales has a lot to get off his chest.

The notebooks that sat unfilled since 2011’s orchestral rap opus “The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales” started to fill up again in early 2022 after ending a lengthy decade of psychoanalysis. Coincidence? Hardly.

Behind the wordplay and name-dropping (Ron Jeremy, Marie Kondo, Genghis Khan and Phillip Glass to cite a few) the songs that made it to the new album Gonzo reveal an ongoing tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness and finally, gratitude. The tension between creativity and commerce also continues to be a career-long exploration for Gonzo.

But is this truly a rap album? Instrumental pieces such as the Stravinsky-esque “Fidelio” or the tearjerking “Eau de Cologne” will remind listeners of Gonzo’s extravagant “musical genius” persona, as the words and rhymes from previous verses settle into their ears. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Gonzo
2. Surfing The Crowd
3. High As A Kite
4. Fidelio
5. Open The Kimono (Feat. Bruiser Wolf)
6. Neoclassical Massacre
7. Cadenza
8. F*CK WAGNER
9. I.C.E
10. Eau De Cologne
11. Poem