The final studio album in the semi-archival Garmonbozia series is now available for pre-order, alongside a live video and a live album!

STUDIO SESSION 3: September 27, 2017

Also available on Youtube

For the first Garmonbozia live show, Sophia and Gabriel decided to try something different and expand their ranks to a trio. U8 Touch Guitarist Matt Tate was the logical choice for a third member, as he was their bandmate in both The Gabriel Construct and his band Pavlov(3). A few days before our first performance, we had our sole rehearsal, which was our first attempt at playing in this style as a trio. I recorded this, yielding three more improvisations spanning 64 minutes. I didn’t open the session again until late 2023 – but when I finally returned to it, I was very surprised at what I heard. I sent the tracks to Markus Reuter to mix, giving him free reign creatively. He completely transformed them into something entirely new and different, yielding our new record, ‘Garmonbozia(3)’.

The full album will become available on Friday, 4/12, but the first song is available for streaming now. A Bandcamp listening party will take place in advance of the release, on Wednesday, 4/10, at 8PM EST – RSVP here!

Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Gabriel Riccio – Electric Piano

Post-production, mix and mastering by Markus Reuter
Cover photo by Gabriel Riccio, art design by Alex Narveson

LIVE SESSION 1: September 30, 2017 at The Handsome Squid, Chicago, IL

Our sole live performance as a trio is documented in this youtube video. It was a house show at The Handsome Squid, Chicago, IL, on September 30, 2017. We played alongside Sacha Mullin and The Mercury Tree, who played early single guitar versions of songs that later landed on their Spidermilk record. The set was essentially an extended improvisation around the opening track from Interior City, ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘. It also included a keyboard progression which appeared on the second track of Garmonbozia(3), as well as some ideas which can be heard on ‘Concussion III‘ on Forecast Tomorrow’s ‘Concussion’ album.

Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Gabriel Riccio – Electric Piano, Vocals
Additional camera work by Ashante Shomari

LIVE SESSION 2: October 29, 2023 at The Crown, Baltimore, MD

Also available on Youtube

The duo configuration of Garmonbozia returned after a long hiatus at a Halloween show at The Crown back bar in Baltimore, organized by our friend Darin Tambascio (Mast Year/XOM/Thought Eater/National Sunday Law/Graviton): ‘Drone/Experimental Night Presents Dark and Spooky Sounds‘. We alongside Joy Amaranthian (Eric ‘Mustard’ Rhodes of Genevieve and Lavender, whose set that night can be found here) and Shadow Comforts (Alan Baumbusch). Darin recorded all 3 sets in addition to manning the sound that night. Once again, this performance culminated in a rendition of ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘.

Sophia Uddin – Violin
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals

Recorded by Darin Tambascio
Cover art by Alex Narveson

The version of Interior City’s opening song ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘ that opens the first Garmonbozia record ended up defining how we played that song live. As such, I’ve decided to start releasing live videos of that song on a weekly basis so you can hear how it evolved over time. The video of our first performance (at Martyrs’, 10/5/15 with Sacha Mullin and Pavlov3) has been available for quite a while now:

To kick off this new video series, I recently released a partial video of the track from our second performance of the song, at Elbo Room, Chicago, IL, on Thursday, 3/24/16. We played with with Lybria, Sea Charms, Sacha Mullin, and Balkan Blue Band – a group specially invented to fill the show’s latest slot, as no one would take it (check out their set here!). Check that out below:

Both of these videos feature the initial live lineup of The Gabriel Construct:
Gabriel Riccio – vocals, keyboard
Sacha Mullin – vocals, keyboard
Sophia Uddin – violin, vocals
Jeff Siegfried – tenor saxophone, vocals
Bill Banks – guitar, vocals
Dante Kester – bass
Thor Bremer – drums

Our third performance (on May 20, 2016) already featured a somewhat different lineup. Jeff Siegfried departed, so we got a new sax player, Joel Moore. He left after this gig – I believe it was our last show with a sax player. We also added a second guitarist, Angelo Zaigirdar, who remained with us for quite a while, jumping between guitar and bass), expanding the lineup to an 8-piece.

The show took place at Harding House, a true haven for weirdo prog musicians. It was lovingly run by Rich Poston and Valerie Pallson, and we are still eternally grateful to them. We played alongside Justin Carter and The Mercury Tree. For this show, we decided to open things a little more abrasively – rather than start with a spooky mood and build things up, we immediately exploded into the first minute of Interior City’s closing song, ‘Curing Somatization’, before jumping into ‘Arrival in a Distant Land’s mysterious atmospheres. I think my scream at the start was perhaps more goofy than intended, but live and learn! As you can see in the thumbnail, The Mercury Tree’s drummer Connor Reilly enters the frame partway through the video:

What interests me so much about performances of ‘Arrival’ is that the song wasn’t as composed as my other material. It’s really a loose scaffold – some chords, a shape, a melody – that allowed the band to really do their thing. As such, I feel like it highlighted the players in my band better than most of the other songs in our set at the time.