Ireland’s Gilla Band are back with another choice cut from their much-anticipated fourth album, “Pugnello”. “Alogia” is a pressure-cooker of post-post-rock abstraction. A foreboding ambient intro quickly develops with militaristic percussion and wonky guitar sounds before frontman Dara Kiely spits out his characteristic wordplay and vulnerable insights into his mental health. Kiely, who was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, brings an unusually exposed quality to the track, his words moving between abstraction, distress and dark humour.
The atmosphere created here is undeniably tense, but not without pockets of subdued, almost nonchalant, musical passages. As always with Gilla Band, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s guitar and what’s bass; both of those instruments are fed through layers of effects. But this isn’t done for technical showboating or stabs at Dadaism. The group create recordings like fine art students making sculptures, every detail delicately and preciously pored over, with no superfluous tone or dynamic.
Kiely’s vocals here are galvanising. As he shouts “A schizo warned ya!” over a bed of distortion and industrial drums, you get the sense of a real human expressing real human trauma. Let’s see AI try to do that.
Irish website The Thin Air have already championed “Pugnello” as one of the greatest Irish albums of all time, and while the rest of us have to wait a few more days to experience it in full, “Alogia” is an undeniably exciting track and one that, like a good horror movie, will stay with you long after you’ve experienced it.
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