Hugo Chavéz: future masterpiece? The next step in a oversaturated media world where you cant develop in your own space, a counter-strategy is isolationism and almost calculated obscurity: soon after the early death of Venezuela´s equivalent to Cuba´s Castro died from cancer this year, a new weird hypnotic fusion between almost tribal ritualistic beats, field recording and advanced ultra expressive synthesis where leaked on the most utilitarian non-commercial platform, YouTube.
Yeti, the first raw video shows a forest contrasting the almost industrial microtonal attack that pushed you into a trance beyond the effects of usual music – this is sound as pure sound effect, but with weird traces of an almost religious ceremonial performance. The follow-up named The Yeti´s wife, added drummer Jaki Tucker on Serge modular to the core group of Ulver Elliason, found drums, Dr. Lydia Tommasimma, thumb piano & digisax and Aimi Miyagi on Synclavier in psychedelic almost danceable 128 beats per minute pounding live workout of their debut recorded on 4 track from a secret morning performance at Le Cat-Corner, Cannes, with a psychedelic video remix. An extremely rare 7″ disc was released, making collectors insane instantly. The Hugo Chavéz motley crew of nomad internationalists then travelled with the massive nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy, recording sounds of submerged animals for a yet to be released cover of the Residents avant-garde classic Eskimo/Diskomo. The arctic isolation must have triggered a reversal of esthetics in the band, as their next release, The Yeti rests, ditch the hard atonal almost tribalistic palette of the first Yeti tracks for manipulated field recordings of purring cats and bubbling champagne…with a tear jerking glockenspiel solo, evoking the vast mind space of childhood. The notes state: WARNING: Don’t use this recording while driving, as it can cause epilepsy. Don’t use when intoxicated, as it can trigger flashbacks, this is a 3rd eye meditation-self-hypnosis-session…and put me in a dream-like alpha wave mind state. A vocal whisper ends off the track: WHO KILLED HUGO? Feeding conspiracy freaks everywhere.
More tracks followed, glitchy drones and recordings of their hypnotic masterclasses. The Hugo Chavéz project is a return to music’s original roots as tools for mind expansion, bypassing the annoying cultural luggage of tradition. The loopy visuals made by Un-googable Boguslaw Luptak on The Yeti rests – turns black cats white and vise versa in an occult parody of the pest of YouTube, the cat trick video. Again turning against expectations, their latest track fragments their back catalogue – walking in their own unique shoes – but transgresses themselves with a subliminal Dylan sampled vocal, making it the most potential but unlikely subliminal future pop hit of 2012 or 2033…is it art, a joke on all the pretentious genre bending invented by the Wire-reading potheads, vinyl-spotter-music, works in progress, prank or just a sonic gas evoking bliss? Watch and turn up to listen to various tracks found on this youtube base.