One of Those Shows

I bought my ticket for Canadian rapper/composer/producer/piano virtuoso/all-around musical madman/genius Chilly Gonzales yesterday. Like with most of my favourite musicians ever, I haven't written about him yet because it's so difficult for me to say everything I want to about him. And I'm probably not going to be able to in this post.

Gonzales, whom may be best known as a long-time friend and collaborator of Feist's (including having helped produce her last two albums), is one of today's most chameleonic, progressive musicians I can think of. Almost all of his albums vary drastically from one another, jumping from dark, excessively coarse, primitive-beat-oriented rap on his first four albums (okay, bad examples with which to start) to the velvet-soft and completely self-descriptive Solo Piano to the glistening, shimmering 70s radio pop of Soft Power to the slick, scatter-shot rap-pop of Ivory Tower (the soundtrack to the film of the same name in which Gonzo appears) to the orchestral rap of The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales, his latest and certainly most ambitious release yet.

Canadian "it" indie label Arts & Crafts' website describes The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales perfectly:

"Accompanied by Hollywood swells, tympani rolls, noble French horns, hypnotizing bells and influenced by Prokofiev, Morricone and Phillip Glass among others, this record is Chilly Gonzales’ 'professional confessional', revealing more of himself on these monologues than ever before."

"Professional confessional" is right: The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales is his most lyrically personal work yet. He even tempers his rap-deliveries, giving his lyrics which, on this album, largely pertain to themes of self-doubt, betraying his usual satiric self-image as a boastful, megalomaniacal, supervillainous MC, a peculiarly (for Gonzales) serious tone.

Knowing that Chilly Gonzales, in his bombastic, mad genius persona, is a performer in the complete sense of the word, as well as a technically gifted musician and improvisor, I know he's going to be one of the best shows I will ever see. It's also going to be my first time at the Rio Theatre just blocks from my place, even though the likes of Chad VanGaalen and Daniel Johnston have played there before. Pumped? You're fucking right I am.

How is Chilly going to pare down his band so it can fit in the Rio Theatre? At least I assume, as the Rio is primarily a movie theatre, it won't be able to accommodate such a huge band: