Band: Slap Guru
Title: Diagrams Of Pagan Life
Genre: Alternative
Label: Sixteentimes music
Release date: October 18, 2018
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Tracklist:
01 Ākāsa
02 Diagrams of pagan life
03 My eerie universe
04 Into the gloom
05 To forget is to forgive
06 Contemporary blankness
07 Earth cycles
08 The same old way - diagrams of the solar system
09 A daily loser - dropping electrons in a hydrogen atom
10 A wornout tool - diagrams on a blaze
11 Streams on a plain
12 Anāhatanāda
Lineup:
Valerio 'Willy' Goattin: Voices, electric & acoustic guitars
Alberto Martin Valmorisco: Electric & classic guitars, sitar, baglama, cosmic frequency collector
Javier Burgos Labeaga: Bass
Jose Medina Portero: Drums, percussion
Slap Guru was created with the assumption that music can become a liberating expedient. Just as the ancient Zen masters, who sometimes resorted with harsh methods to reach the Satori (even
slapping the apprentice), Slap Guru tries to shake the bowels of the listener through the rock language. The band debuted on the stage and went immediately to record in the HeadRoom Studios
(Madrid) his first work, “Cosmic Hill”. Andromeda Relix released it in 2016, and re- edited it in January 2017 on a Vinyl format, including 2 extra tracks. Now Slap Guru have just finish to
record their second L.P.
“Diagrams of pagan life” that will be released in October 2018 for the Swiss label Sixteentimes Music.
I took some time to review this album, for its structure, for the elaboration of the pieces and for the originality that the group proposes.
The first group that comes to mind, to make you understand the idea the music that Slap Guru offers is Jethro Tull.
From the intro Ākāsa, you already notice a substantial difference from the multiplicity of avant-garde music, which although it brings me back vaguely to the Beau Geste, proposes a breath of
freshness.
Intense and very seventies, the song "My eerie universe", a spiral that envelops with its sounds
Although they do not propose anything new, they manage to attract attention, Diagrams of pagan life is an introspective, deep album, a musicality that enters the bones, unlike the intellectual
'prog' genre we are used to listening to lately.
The Slap Gurus go further and offer songs such as "A wornout tool - diagrams on a blaze", in which rock makes headlines and relies on the voice, very interpretive in each song, a sort of
storytelling that accompanies throughout the journey 'album.
Another intense and full of pathos is "Streams on a plain", a piece definitely above average.
An album that transpires rock, with distorted guitars, with enveloping sounds and sometimes markedly hard rock.
I count them in the alternative genre even if the musicality and the inventiveness of the band is so big, that it can not be enclosed in a gender label.
“Diagrams Of Pagan Life” satisfy the tastes of those who love the refined, shady sounds and the 70s veins.
Good album for Slap Guru!
Valeria Campagnale
Slap Guru - "Diagrams of pagan life" Official Teaser