GAISTER - s/t

Gaister are the trio of Olivia Salvadori, Akihide Monna and Coby Sey, who first popped up on the radar late 2024 with the digital-only release of their debut collaboration, but had been working together in various guises on and off since 2017. With this first-time vinyl pressing now emerging some ten months later we get a second look at what was their first recorded output, a still fairly perplexing record that hybridises free-form percussion, a polyglot of operatic and spoken word vocals in three different native tongues (Japanese, Italian and English), a kind of avant-minded improvised krautrock, and a musique concreté-like approach to unconventional sound. Coby Sey's connection to the contemporary British alt-pop underground feels very far away here, instead indulging a more overtly European sense of the avant garde, an instinct that we also often see articulated by label mate, Valentina Magaletti, both solo and with others (Tomaga in particular on 'Conscious Concentration'). Indeed, this is the type of record we might more typically see crop up on her Permanent Draft imprint - think Irene Bianco's Kronblade LP or Transportées by Marie De La Nuit's. Which is to say this is the kind of freewheeling composition full of surprises and unexpected sounds, and with a strong conceptual foundation - smart-brained, adventurous, frequently startling. The name Gaister is a fabricated word that plays on the German word for 'spirit'. A unique spirit, if you like. As metaphors for the sounds the trio make, it feels bracingly apt. 
 
FFO: Valentina Magaletti, Cucina Povera, Irene Bianco, Coby Sey, Tomaga