GANGI | “AS FAKE ESTATES” EP | OFFICE OF ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL | AUG 5, 2022

Bio:

“Two men’s trash can be the same men’s treasure.”

Previously praised as “dark and rich” (Los Angeles Times) for its “aural collage that seems aimed at warping any expectations” (LA Weekly) or more esoterically, “a soundtrack to cognitive dissonance” (Under the Radar), GANGI’s “electro-psych evolution has been years in the making” according to SPIN, writing in the summer of 2012 about the Los Angeles-based duo’s second album.

Now, “making” is made as GANGI (Matt Gangi and Eric Chramosta) lands in the future with a three-song suite of sonic disturbance from the past. “As Fake Estates” arrives Aug. 5 on the artist’s Office of Analogue and Digital label.

The material on “As Fake Estates” was recorded around the same time as the 2012 GANGI album gesture is, and is mostly comprised of what Matt Gangi describes as “mangled” versions of songs that date back to the debut GANGI album A, released in 2007. “We sampled and re-constructed our own re-recordings to make most of it,” he explains.

Chramosta terms the new release “a multiple-decade long lineage of assembly, disassembly and reassembly” or the re-examination of “that which had been left to collect digital dust. Two men’s trash can be the same men’s treasure.”

The elements that call back GANGI’s psych-pop past are heavily spliced and fed through myriad electronic components, channeling the anarchy of The Pop Group and melting warble of DJ Screw. Other influences include Black Dice and Salem.

A collaborative brotherhood that began when Gangi and Chramosta were only 12-years-old, “As Fake Estates” represents the first official release in this decade for GANGI, a project that will go forward with the name Fake Estates from this point on.

Just as this long-overdue release is transitional, Matt Gangi himself is traveling a new path with a new name. “I found Sanatana Dharma and the traditional yoga since I last released music,” he explains. “My main Guru gave me the name Mahadev.”

“After GANGI as Fake Estates, GANGI will BE Fake Estates,” Mahadev says.

Just as Gangi the man is now Mahadev, the band’s moniker represents a permanent change for the pair after recording and touring throughout the world for years as GANGI. The decidedly more experimental sounds of “As Fake Estates” are heavily colored by hand-built circuits and the noise of revived reel-to-reel tape machines.

“I was building circuits when we were recording this material and we passed sounds through all kinds of things,” Mahadev explains. “Eric grew up around Otari reel-to-reel tape decks. In middle school, he recorded a mangled symphony to his dad’s Otari deck.”

“We were inspired by all the glitch music that was happening in LA at the time that we recorded this material,” Mahadev continues. “GANGI performed at (weekly experimental hip hop and electronic music club) Low End Theory during those days. The experimental electronics that were happening there influenced these sounds.”

“As Fake Estates” by GANGI arrives on Aug. 5, streaming on all digital services, and as a vinyl release with etched B-side. These very limited vinyl copies are artifacts, having been pressed and stored at the time that the original recordings were made a decade ago, only to be released now.

Their trash, our treasure.