GABRIEL GARZÓN-MONTANO | LIVE REVIEW
Ffresh, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Sat 25 Feb
A duvet is draped across the stage, connecting the keyboard set up to the drum kit. In between Storm’s Doris and Ewan, the heavy tog and the big pink and yellow flowers adorning it show Gabriel Garzón-Montano has brought his home comforts, as well as a touch of idiosyncracy, for the Wales Millennium Centre’s live music and cabaret season at Ffresh.
GGM and percussionist David Frazier Jr are a sparse setup, but despite this being the last stop on their tour, they’re a tight unit tonight. Gabriel, with dirty blonde hair, one eye made up blue and red, and a non-hipster beard, is a force of nature, and sets up his keyboard and synth to face the sullen looking drummer, who cracks just one or two wry smiles all night, signalling artistic licence when an extra drumfill was added, or when the music was veering more off-grid. In more than an hour, the duo rattle through 14 tracks of fruit and insect-obsessed synthetic soul, blending a freshly minted album Jardin with tracks from the Bishouné EP – a nod to Gabriel’s bilingual abilities.
The tunes are deceptively simple, but avant-garde enough to be difficult to categorise, probably due to GGM’s mixed French/Colombian heritage, interest in classical and experimental composition and the soul and funk genealogy of the USA, where he was brought up. He sets the tone with Sour Mango, probably his best known tune, looping offbeat handclaps to boom-bap and a pulsing synth line to tinkling keyboards; seductively singing “atop a hill under the mango tree, wishing on a memory”; I-eye-aahs counterpointed with woo-oooh-yeahs. Single The Game, with a heavy D’Angelo influence, is given an airing too, with the line “fought like a tangerine, crazy aubergines” provoking smiles on our table and others.
As a signature quirk, Gabriel’s vocals are multitracked, fingerclicks and handclaps looped to form harmonies, texture or light percussion and executed well on Everything Is Everything, which isn’t a Radiohead or Phoenix cover, but sounds like Omar jamming with Shuggie Otis, with a slinky keyboard, squiggly synth and a rumba coda. An errant mic, pinwheeling away from his energetic singing and handclaps, almost derails the crescendo.
There’s some sweet Rhodes, synths and sleighbells on Fruitflies which mentions “a million pairs of feet getting weak” and “can’t find my way back home, can’t change the wind blows,” a potential lyrical reference to the refugee crisis. Combine this social commentary with a slow waltz, jazz chord shifts and a vintage-orchestral synth sound homaging Stevie Wonder, and you have a modern Pastime Paradise on your hands. Most of the darker tunes come from his earlier EP, with spectral soul similar to some of Gnarls Barkley and Dangermouse’s more interesting work. 6 8 is a seductive slowjam, and he asks the audience to join in with the soft ooooh harmonies, proudly announcing, “We did something tender together!”
With plenty of witty quips, he works the crowd throughout, exhibit B: “I know you’re seated but you’re funky people – you’re in a safe space here” and exhibit C, working in “couple on table 3, after you walked out on me” to a freestyling section of the very poppy Crawl, in reference to the only early deserters of the night.
There’s a Prince-influenced guitar riff in Pour Maman from the EP, which comes to a loud climax, while Me Alone has a stuttering electronic drum coda, which evolves into a mutant salsa drumbeat from Frazier Jr as Gabriel struts out into the crowd singing in Spanish. The crowd is given a quick language lesson, to sing “la candela viva” as part of a Cumbian encore – we got the rhythm right halfway through, with most of the crowd, including Charlotte Church, presumed to be more proficient in Welsh than any other language.
Garzon-Montano shares some fat synth sounds in common with Stones Throw labelmate James Pants, and was sampled by Drake – so he’s already making some ripples across the pond of quirky r’n’b. Watch out for My Balloon as the one that takes him stratospheric.
words CHRIS SEAL photos NATHAN ROACH