Among the most peculiar debuts of the year is that of Gelli Haha, a singer and composer of Idaho who, in ‘Switcheroo’, edited by Innovative Leisure, offers his particular world of surrealism and color. If the album opens with a theme called ‘Funny Music’, fun is assured in direct that include elastic beds, palm of hands or inflatable dolphins.
The “Gelliverse” – as Gelli Haha calls his own world – is dominated by the red color, present in all his aesthetics. Angel Abaya, the person behind alias, says that she is dressed in red all day because she wants her art and her life “to be represented between them.” Abaya has been co-director of a theatrical dance company specialized in avant-garde productions, and shows.
Gelli Haha’s musical proposal is electropop synthesizers and a deliberately Bobalicón humor, very present in the single ‘Bunce House’, the song of the day that today. Facing children’s and surreal images, ‘Bounce House’ includes expressions such as “Chugga-Chugga-Chugga-Chugga” or “Spin Me, Sally, I’m Your Gelli Bean”, while the musical base seems made of plasticine or -Efectively-gelatin. Although the background message seems to be a breakdown (“I don’t love you less because I waste you”), the road is charmingly absurd and playful.
The rest of the ‘switcheroo’ tracks, as the outstanding ‘Spit’ or ‘Normalize’, follow a similar sound line. Gelli Haha has obtained this sound by associating with Sean Guerin, a member of the revival group of Lux, of Los Angeles. Before, Angel played for eight years in several bands of indie, folk and jazz inside Boise’s music scene, Idaho, where he was born. His first album, ‘The Bubble’, signed with his first name, was guitars and went unnoticed.
After the launch of that album, Angel decided to take a radical turn and “get out of the established mold”, thus creating the alter ego of Gelli Haha. His universe of references is as surreal as his aesthetics: he mentions both the “strange New York parties” of Club Kids or James Murphy and Osho -the Guru popularized by the documentary ‘Wild Wild Country’ of Netflix, who claimed that “seriousness is a disease” -, passing through Britney Spears, one of his childhood idols of childhood. With such an influences cocktail, surrealism is served.
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