Gargantua

Kotegarda – the music turned upside down
Kotegardais the second album by the Polish band Gargantua. Gargantua’s debut CD (Gargantua, Ars Mundi, 2003) signaled the band’s place at the fringe of the tradition of Rock In Opposition, avant progressive rock and linguistic poetry. The new album goes a long way further: it is the outcome of uncompromising and consistent search for eclectic and recognizable sound idiom that fuses rock, modern music, jazz and literature.
Kotegarda features compact, meticulously thought-out compositions that use techniques usually associated with jazz and chamber music (dissonance, frequent changes of odd rhythms, polyrhythms, mixed meters, unorthodox harmonies, altered chords and polyphony). Careful listener will detect affiliations with contemporary music rock (Stravinski, Reich) i rock experimentation (Fripp, Firth, Univers Zero, krautrock).
Gargantua’s new music provides a mind-boggling abundance of colors, moods and compositional schemes. Dense polyphonic structures are interwoven with seemingly harmless, “mock-heroic” tunes, morphing into either jagged interplay of guitar and replicated violin, or irreverent choral enunciations, electronic soundscapes and piano staccatos.
Carnival fights here with Lent, seriousness with the grotesque, corporeality with sterility, baroque excess with ascetic introspection. This is a truly “Pantagruelian” vision of music that is self-conscious, self-mocking and highly goal-oriented. And surprising as it may sound, its intransigent, mathematical logic does not prevent the Polish artists from playing with a sharp rocky edge.