Gonjasufi Mandela Effect

I’ll spare your tired fingers that Wikipedia search and tell you that the Mandela Effect describes the phenomenon of remembering something that was never there to be remembered in the first place, or even living a life founded on an incorrect source. In the case of producer Gonjasufi, it’s extremely pertinent, since this record reups his recent mess of a post-punk/electronic slab ‘Callus’ in ways completely different, inviting a plethora of excellent artists to rework and rethink corners of his squalid, noisy and punk electronics.

The tracks, vastly different, still make up something that sounds like a Gonjasufi record, and that’s why the title fits: hearing these shimmering, intensified and suffocated versions of his tunes by artists like experimental rap outfit Shabazz Palaces, legend Tony Allen and Massive Attack founder Daddy G suggests an alternate reality for the songs where things still swirl up shit and create collisions. Many of these remixes further collapse elements of their source, with Perera Elsewhere’s remix of “Manic Depressant” focusing on a mix of abyss-staring squeaks and what sound like field recorded scratches, plus choirs singing from somewhere far-away. It sounds so great because it doesn’t have the structure of a song at all but continually makes me feel like there is one.

These tracks commit quite incredibly to rethinking Gonjasufi’s record, in that Santino Romeri’s ‘remix’ of “The Conspiracy” cuts out the club-clouded melody and replaces it with minor acoustic strums. Imaginative and head-scratching, it’s worth hearing this to see if you’ll still feel part of Gonjasufi’s weird, warped world when he himself has been removed as its host.