Goat - New psych-world horizons

Korpilombolo is a small village of fewer than six hundred inhabitants, located in the far north of Sweden, almost on the border with Finland, known in the Scandinavian countries mainly because Agnetha Fältskog (one of the famously blonde members of Abba) mentioned it in a 1972 solo single: “Tio mil kvar till Korpilombolo”. According to a deeply rooted and evocative legend, the local inhabitants were initiated in ancient times into voodoo practices by a traveling witch, using mysterious codes drawn from old scriptures. These rites remained alive for years, until one day a band of crusaders punished the heretics and their books by burning them at the stake.

The aesthetic and the original symbolism were handed to Goat on a silver platter: a young collective hailing from that very region, who fully exploit the imagery of a mysterious society devoted to divinatory practices, taking as their very name the pagan symbol of the goat. We know absolutely nothing about the personal details of the band's members, who from the outset made a choice that would strongly define their public image: maintaining strict anonymity and appearing in public wearing masks and costumes that are folkloric to say the least, surrounding themselves with an impenetrable aura of mystery.

The style Goat operate within is a heavily contaminated psychedelia, one that ends up mutating into unpredictable shapes. The crossover with “ethnic” music is the most frequent of these, through a meticulous search for exoticisms grafted onto rock and funk roots, all strongly centered on the concept of repetition. The result is a hypnotic sound, a spiritual kraut devoted to the journey, blending with flavors drawn from traditions geographically distant from their native Sweden. A meltin' pop that, in the age of the web, instantly brings together the most varied populations, reinvigorated through strong doses of instinct and passion, able to shake up the cold ancestry of teutonic motorik.

It's Rocket Recordings, the English label specializing precisely in vintage psychedelic territory, that signs Goat. In 2012 their first single, “Goathead”, is released: a track built on simple, aggressive guitar riffs, savage rhythms and bare-bones lyrics, flowing into a finale marked by a fresh, folk-tinged acoustic melody. “Goathead” hits the mark immediately, and arrives shortly before the collective's debut album.

On August 20th of that same year comes the punctual debut, World Music: a genuine statement of intent right from the title, one that the album's content lives up to perfectly. According to some, there's nothing transcendental or revolutionary here, just a crib sheet of blends already exploited in the past, which on closer inspection even echo shining examples dating back to the Sixties; according to others, the record can instead be considered an absolute reference point for the new afro-beat, holding its own against other classics from earlier eras.

If the songwriting (though it works well when grafted onto the liveliness and impact of the performance) isn't distinguished by any particular refinement, and is conceived mostly for the musical effect it produces, it's above all the sonic choices that spark interest, with Africa and the Middle East at the center of attention, introduced right from the opening notes of “Diarabi”. From there the carousel kicks off, hosting the most varied solutions: “Run To Your Mama” is an effective slice of psych-rock, “Golden Dawn” leans into an abrasive classic rock left to swirl at breakneck tempo, the wave-like “Let It Bleed” is a triumph of irresistible horns. But there's also the Talking Heads-style funk of “Disco Fever”, which partly recalls India, partly certain experiments à la “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts”, and partly delivers organ blasts recalling Doors and Pink Floyd. The Fripp-esque guitars of “Goatman”, the long lysergic digression closing “Det som aldrig förändras”, and the more minimal arrangements (just voice, guitars and little else) of “Goatlord” (perhaps the least interesting track on offer) round out a menu that keeps the level of imagination and creativity consistently high, resting on catchy constructions that only occasionally come across as unpolished or shaky. Despite a few minor flaws, World Music establishes itself as a thoroughly successful debut, met everywhere with glowing reviews.

Naturally the buzz around the band is enormous, and tours and appearances at major festivals soon follow, including Glastonbury, All Tomorrow's Parties and Coachella.

Live, Goat present themselves as an expanded collective, giving rise to unbridled, hyper-energetic happenings, well captured by Live Ballroom Ritual, released in 2013, which revisits the tracks from the debut, often fittingly stretched out, with the addition of a few compositions that had remained more in the shadows, such as the “Goatman” b-side “The Sun The Moon”, and the two tracks that had only appeared on single, “Stonegoat” and “Dreambuilding”.

In their live incarnation the songs become even more whirling, often dissolving into a free-form format that never stops surprising and drawing you in.

By this point Goat are one of the hottest names on the new European music scene, and anticipation for the second album is feverish; it's finally satisfied on September 26, 2014, when everyone can at last discover the contents of Commune. The new work continues the joyous ancestral sabbath of “World Music”, manifesting itself in sumptuous structures where “sounds from the world” are set into richly worked, concretely acid-rock architectures. Once again, even if the element of surprise is somewhat dulled, the band reaches bold peaks, as in the closing “Gathering Of Ancient Tribes” (take note: the initials of the title's four words spell out the band's name), a clever chemical pairing of repetition-based mechanisms and lysergic guitars, topped by a thoroughly effective vocal performance. The same approach returns in the even wilder “Bondye”, the chief voodoo deity.

At certain points the decisive influence of Indian and Middle Eastern sounds comes to the fore (“Hide From The Sun”, though the big guitars are always present, and in this case there's also a lovely acoustic closing), at others it's the rock component that's pushed to the forefront (“Goatslaves” and “Goatchild”, though ethnic references are always lurking around the corner). Elsewhere, highly evocative vignettes are sketched out, with the theme of the journey remaining ever central (“To Travel The Path Unknown”), leaning more heavily on conciseness and shorter running times than in the past (“The Light Within”). But working backwards through the tracklist, the two opening tracks alone would be enough to place Commune among the year's best records, exemplary representatives of the band's two-sided nature: “Talk To God” is the perfect trait d'union with the debut, a track that spreads its wings over a warm psychedelia streaked with hypnotic exoticisms, while “Words” is one of Goat's finest compositions ever, where tribal rhythms and fuzzed-out six-strings take center stage in clear, direct fashion. Eclecticism thus becomes the ultimate goal of a musicality capable of naturally blending tradition and modernity. Commune contains little more than half an hour of music in total, but it's just enough to once again open up before us a small yet vast world to discover, breathe, live, and (why not?) help spread further.

On October 7, 2016 the third album is released: Requiem. Across thirteen tracks and over an hour of vividly colorful music, the Swedish collective sweeps away any lingering doubt about the band's genuine artistic substance. The central idea remains rock-solid: bringing together cross-cutting stylistic influences, naturally fusing tradition and modernity, writing ancestral sabbaths dense with sounds borrowed from around the world, synthesizing them through a highly lysergic lens. The Andean flutes that take over from nature sounds in “Union Of Sun And Moon” are merely the introduction to a new magical adventure, which, through the relaxing, exotically scented dance of “I Sing In Silence”, leads us by the hand toward the record's first key track, the rhythmic explosion of “Temple Rhythms”, a psychedelic raga that stands as one of the three pillars of the rich tracklist. The other two are “Goatband” – an irresistible, torrential instrumental mini-jam for percussion, guitars and saxophone – and the ultra-acid “Goatfuzz”, another symbol of the band's deeply personal blend, built to demolish any stylistic barrier and create a cosmopolitan sonic oasis.

Requiem is a journey around the world, capable of bringing languages together, condensing contaminations, transmuting into unpredictable scenarios, enriching itself now with funk leanings, now with rock flare-ups (see the solo in the second half of “Alarms”), now with kraut-style hypnosis, even opening up into a new-age-flavored finale (“Ubuntu”). The band comes from the north of Sweden but knows how to represent every South of the world, rereading them through a Western lens: there's India (“Try My Robe” sounds very Bollywood), Africa, South America, muezzin calls grafted onto Mexican sunsets (“Psychedelic Lover”) and so much more. A strong idea persists, a stubborn design, only seemingly out of step with our times: proof that it's still possible to preserve one's own (anonymous) identity even in the age of social networks. Goat know how to shuffle the cards without ever making the final result seem out of context or overly pretentious. Detractors will be ready to argue that, all things considered, they haven't invented anything new, but the music of the new millennium, in an increasingly interracial community, cannot do without such a varied musical approach, one that will soon spawn followers. Seen in this light, Requiem stands as a precious, powerful, in many ways indispensable record, one that spins languages, peoples and flavors together, magically uniting them all as few have managed to do before. Pulling it off for the third time running was anything but a given.

In October 2018, one of Goat's mysterious members steps out on his own with a project called Goatman. Rhythms, released once again on Rocket Recordings, contains six tracks, opened by the unstoppable groove of “Jaam Ak Salam”, a vividly colorful afrobeat party. “Hum Bebass Nahin” edges close to the desert-blues of Tinariwen, complete with a wah-wah solo, while the female choruses on “Carry The Load” and the flow of “Aduna” strongly evoke 1970s Ethiopian music. Goatman plays nearly all the instruments himself, leaving the vocal parts to a string of guests, among them Senegalese singer Seydi Mandoza and Sweden's own Amanda Werne, known at home under the stage name Slowgold.

Five years after "Requiem" — hardly a reassuring title — and three years after the debut of the Goatman project, the "mere" release of a retrospective at the start of September 2021 does nothing to dispel fears about the end of the Goat experience. Headsoup is in fact a collection of thirteen b-sides, unreleased tracks and singles not previously included on any album — though some are quite well known to fans of the mysterious Swedish collective — that deserved a second, more visible chance.

The material is organised in strict chronological order: it opens with three sparkling tracks dredged up from the band's very earliest period, the one of their acclaimed debut "World Music". "The Sun The Moon" appeared on the debut single "Goatman", released in early 2012, while "Stonegoat" and "Dreambuilding" made up the two sides of a seven-inch released in June 2013. From the "Commune" era come "Dig My Grave" (released on Sub Pop in September 2014) and the pairing "It's Time For Fun" / "Relax" (August 2015).

"The Snake Of Addis Abeba" was the b-side of "I Sing In Silence", May 2016; "Union Of Mind And Soul" came out in September of that same year, as did "Goatfizz", an alternate version of "Goatfuzz" made available in a limited run for Record Store Day 2017; "Let It Burn" and "Friday, Pt. 1" date instead from May 2018. To close things out there's room for the previously unreleased "Fill My Mouth" (with its fine funk groove) and "Queen Of The Underground", an exhilarating lysergic plunge enriched by two blistering solos in the finale.

In October 2022 comes the mysterious collective's fourth album of new material, Oh Death. Mystical and vividly colourful, the ten new chapters of the Goat saga express their now well-established sonic mix, which finds its most thrilling moments in the funkadelic orgies of "Soon You Die" and "Under No Nation". The prism's folk-transmutation side, meanwhile, is refined through the very "Led Zeppelin III" atmospheres permeating "Chukua Pesa" — essentially their own "Gallows Pole" — and the tribal dance of "Apegoat".

For the rest, it's an exhilarating chase through afrobeat ("Remind Yourself"), free-form jazz (for instance in the finale of "Goatmilk") and desert blues ("Blow The Horns"), with the groove always firmly placed centre stage ("Do The Dance"). This time the scales tip toward more rhythm and less jam attitude, resulting in a record that keeps up the high standards Goat have by now accustomed us to.

Confirming this approach, in 2023 Goat released Seu Sangue, a twenty-minute EP containing four reworked tracks plus one new song. Among those involved in the reworking are Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, who got his hands on "Soon You Die" and dressed it in early-seventies colouring, and Thor Harris of Swans, who adds further percussion to the funkadelic orgies of "Under The Nation", a tribal party song remixed for the occasion by John Mark Lapham of MIEN.

Marlene Ribeiro (a Brazilian musician previously with GNOD, as well as a collaborator of Valentina Magaletti) reworks in a highly personal way (stripping away the guitars) the ancestral afrobeat raga "Remind Yourself"; the hyper-tribal groove of "Do The Dance" winks at faint industrial refractions, while the previously unreleased "Seu Sangue" is the collection's only acoustic-psych moment, naturally introspective, the sole deviation from the record's overall theme.

Still in 2023, in mid-October, it's the turn of Medicine, which confirms the Swedish collective's renewed state of grace. Some songs are drawn from long jam sessions: that's the case with "Vakna" and the opening "Impermanence And Death", perfect snapshots of this approach. "Raised By Hills" and "Tripping In The Graveyard" are rhythmic electro-acoustic folk pieces, the mantra "I Became The Unemployment Office" plunges the most lysergic side of Brian Jonestown Massacre into kraut territory, and "TSOD" draws inspiration from the Beatles circa "Sgt. Pepper's", on the Harrison side of things.

Other facets of their vividly colourful prism are represented by the more meditative "You'll Be Allright" and by the hyper-fuzz delirium of "Join The Resistance", a cover of a track released shortly before by fellow Swedes GÅS, a band in whose orbit — according to rumours never fully confirmed — some members of Goat themselves are said to move.

Another year passes, and the following album, Goat (released in October 2024), confirms a solid sound rooted in world music and psychedelia. Groove and afro-funk, guitars and wah-wah, energy and hypnosis, ancestral visions and ethnic echoes, but also a few pleasant lateral detours, such as the hip-hop stride of "Zombie", the desert blues of "All Is One", the jazz undertones of the instrumental "Fool's Journey" (complete with those flutes that have lately become so fashionable), and the Californian freak vibe of the Doors-esque "Frisco Beaver" (keep an ear out for the little keyboard lines that define its second half).

Opening the dance is "One More Death", built on a riff with a distinctly Seventies imprint, a place where, as if by magic, Led Zeppelin, Funkadelic, Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar all converge, hard rock pictured as an oasis amid the dunes of the Sahara. The hyper-rhythmic, at times sonic, jubilation of "Ourboros" closes out Goat's new pagan sabbath, a tribal ceremony that once again succeeds in bringing folkloric traditions from — more or less imaginary — remote worlds into the present day.

Amid voodoo rites, ancestral psychedelia, Afrocentric mantras, Andean dances, fuzz guitars and jazz drift, Goat have achieved the goal of updating the very concept of world music, proving they possess a vision with few equals anywhere in the world. Credit is also due to Rocket Recordings, who, by believing in them, have managed to earn recognition as one of the leading labels of the psychedelic movement that has developed in recent years.

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