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Introducing Elements, a new ambient & experimental record from Evil Gima.

Over the years of working with Jorge Martinez on Evil Gima releases (and many more recordings as well), I've found it’s extraordinarily rewarding and challenging to make experimental music that means something.

The same is true for the opposite.

It’s easy to make experimental music that means absolutely nothing at all and lacks any merit. To make that kind of experimental music, all we really need to do is to make noise and layer it. In other words, find a sound, layer another sound on top, and voila: Mediocre experimental music.

Jorge and I constantly riff off each other to make something a little bit more inviting. There’s intention behind the sounds, a symmetry that pushes us (and hopefully the listener) into a weirder and weirder place.

We long for a consistency and symmetry in good music and we try to bring it into Evil Gima.

Similarly, we long for a piece of music to force us to sit back in our chairs and whistle, if not bristle, at the scope of it, not unlike the pause after getting a much needed punch to the face. I take particular pride in the fact that one person took the time to write of our previous album Alluvion, that “this is music for an emotionally intense fuck.”

For Elements, we hope to offer you songs of that same caliber, or at least in the realm of a comment like that. We reached to create experimental songs that have an underlying symmetry to them. We wanted to tell you a story. We tried very hard to capture a mood that we don’t often hear from music nowadays.

We reached for magical and at the same time intensely perverse and of a full-goblin mode…. at times incredibly unsettling…. at times completely blown out and followed by the sound of a well-deserved silence.

Jorge and I now offer you Elements, the next iteration of Evil Gima. Thank you so much for taking a moment to read this and for your consideration for listening to our challenging music. We love to make it.

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I’m still pinching myself that Bandcamp’s editors took a listen!

Chilling ambient music with mournful tones and barren textures, perfect to score and abandoned cityscape.

Queen City Sounds just gave Evil Gima a wonderful review:

One has to imagine that Evil Gima conceived of the song and video for “IT/AM” in some sort of creative tandem. The sounds themselves suggest spaciousness and texture like the snow and water droplets depicted in the video. The piano figure drifts while plinks of metallic sounds like processed windchimes or stringed instrument plucking and slowly resolving drones convey a languid atmosphere. It’s like the analog of natural processes unfolding like the accumulation of snow depicted in the video as it forms and melts into water and fills into ponds then evaporates and the cycle begins again. It’s a little like an orchestral piece Anthony Braxton might have written around the turn of the 70s if he had access to a robust electronic palette of sounds. That organic improvisational way of arranging noises in abstract, conceptual fashion that made him a rebel then and a style outside orthodox music making that ambient music and abstract free jazz aficionados appreciate now.

Pulling disparate threads of sonic traditions, Evil Gima creates a cinematic experience with the audiovisual project “IT/AM”. In the Jorge Martinez directed video for “IT/AM” the trailing melodies of Evil Gima’s forlorn piano arc across an alive sound palate of evolving drones and mechanical, almost bird-like musicbox percussion. Fans of dark ambient or deconstructed neo-classical music will find a lot in “IT/AM” and Evil Gima’s work to sink into.

(The full review)

Directed by Jorge Martinez:

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Listen to IT\AM & Evil Gima

Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music | Amazon | iHeartRadio | Deezer | Napster

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Preorder Alluvion by Evil Gima

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Advanced Press for Alluvion

“Listening to Evil Gima’s Alluvion is a singular experience. Its implacable currents of sound pull from two worlds. The first is a place mythic and terribly old, an ancient corridor where monsters lurk with the unknowable thing inside you. The other is an echo of our own voices, captured from some unimaginable future; deranged and waiting. It’s the only music I have ever heard that conjures the cosmic terror/wonder of the world unknown.

Evil Gima and Alluvion are a genre unto themselves, a separate universe from the familiar and predictable undulations of horror than can only speak to the surface of things. Alluvion peels you open and seizes that unfathomable reality within... then sets it churning.

Rejoice, human. Music is not dead. And you are called to obliteration.”

— Kirt Bozeman

Imagine three pianos recorded one at a time, and each of them was improvised. The pianists could only react when they heard a note. The result? This is the most ridiculously chill piano song.

To me, this record has a nice, sleepy feeling to it. Something to relax into, something to take a nice nap listening to (dare I say even on repeat?).

Evil Gima's ulu is a tour-de-force in ambient experimental sound. The songs themselves have no melody, no harmony (Aak And Quack excepted), and in many cases no sound that is recognizable. It was created using a number of different sound design modules and hyped to sound good at 85dB.

This isn't your suger-coated candy pop, feel good, I'm-the-king-of-the-world type of music. It's an adventure for those sonic searchers that are willing to listen to music with scruity and stoicism. Are you one of the few and proud?

Let’s keep this re-releases going!

Today's re-release is AES by Evil Gima. Evil Gima is a catch-all moniker for my ambient, dark, and experimental music collages. They tend to be great for staring out into space and relaxing into the textures.

After I moved to Santa Fe, NM, I was really hit hard by the epic cloud formations, the beautiful art, and also the cultural and historical amnesia. Read about the history of the city, and you'll be quietly freaked out.

Anyhow, AES always reminds me of that time of the ceaselessly changing skies of New Mexico.

I've also included the full liner notes of the record AND five Ableton Live screenshots of the projects. Perhaps you musicians would like that?

Deep, dark, and nightmarish, IT\AM is sure to enthrall you with an intense wall of sound and epic piano. Checkit!

Evil Gima — AES

This album consists of five songs without any rhythm but roll by like thunderstorms. I managed to capture a cloud formation in Santa Fe, NM that naturally fit the mood of this particular song on the record:

All five songs on AES are roughly the same: Ambient, without rhythm, and exactly what it feels like to lazily watch thunderstorms:

Evil Gima: AES

$6.99

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Field Spectra — Austin, TX

Austin, TX by Field Spectra consists of five field recordings of nature in Austin. Recording locations included Shoal Creek in downtown Austin (the audio is posted below) and various spots in South Austin including the Golden Dome of Pure Knowledge. That's a really neat building.

If you're an Austin expatriot, this is the album to get:

Field Spectra: Austin, TX

$4.99

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Evil Gima: Syrup

$1.29

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Syrup came from a simple idea: record a lot of ambient, textural piano and slow it down. This roughly twenty five minute song was slowed down by 75%, and is now available for your phase-out-and-stare-at-a-wall-for-an-hour pleasure.

Cover art is a derivative of A failure in fly-paper by Friedrich Graetz.