I was never familiar with Filipino music or artists. My first full listening session of Jade Fake’s Kimchi Gonzales was my first exposure. And after those twenty minutes were over, I felt that pleasant disorientation that one feels after spending a day at a theme park with nothing but roller coasters.
This is never a negative for me. This always means to ride again, experience, savor and let it expand. But, first, I needed context.
I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Filipino music. The pop, the traditional folk and several other underground genres and bands. Found a lot of new music. This is the gift that experimental music gives. It broadens your palette and deepens your appreciation for any future sounds that fill your perceptions.
Kimchi Gonzales is a electronic blender set for heavy stun. Jade Fake’s vocals flow in perfect sync with every break beat and dynamic to weave a testimony of tyranny, gender dysphoria, cultural seppuku and racial marginalization. I found myself looking to her voice as my mercurial guide inside her sonic factory of the soul. For those in the same acquaintance of incongruence, regardless of gender expression, Jade Fake is a sibling in stripes through and through. You will hear yourself.
I found myself listening to Cross-Dresser, Cross-Legger, Cross-Seller over and over again. The violence of a culture set against you becomes the violence you unleash upon everything including yourself to try and obtain some kind of psychic relief and revelation. “Burn it down”, Jade directs. What is left is the real you in peace, trying to catch your breath for the next punctuated evolution.
100% of tape proceeds and 50% of CD proceeds for this release go to Panday Sining National, a national performing group of artists aiming to create art as a medium for progressive expressions of national democracy. Jade Fake is also a collective member of Panday Sining. 75% of digital proceeds on Bandcamp go to Jade Fake. 25% of digital proceeds, and per Jade, 50% of CD proceeds supports Grimalkin‘s future releases.
We all need to expand our consciousness, not just those that wish us ill. For Jade Fake and a lot of us, we are a little ahead of the game because of our experiences. If you need a glittering comfort for those overstimulated synapses that can also become an fully automatic weapon, Kimchi Gonzales is the side kick any person needs to survive this supposed apocalypse.
Out now on Bandcamp.