Solo circadian dribbles from Acid Mothers' Gigi, doing four longform conceptual pieces for Jew's Harp, voice, synthesizer, and guitar, respectively. Side one is tightly knit and lost in the trance. Side two explores the spaceways in Teletubby color, a truly cosmic experience and the real reason to own this record. The rest is just fine tuning for your brain. Pretty crucial for the track mentioned. Edition of 200 numbered copies.
Doug MOSURAK.
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In a limited edition of 200 copies, this sophomore release is an acquired taste, and certainly miles away from their drone-metal debut, 2004’s "My Metal Machine Music." Magic Aum GiGi here, with the help of singer Keiko, is a sort of concept record, with each of the four tunes driven by one of four instruments: guitar, synth, voice, and Jew’s harp. Depending on your taste, this is hit and miss. Keiko’s vocal performance has a drony, ethereal quality, though the melody is minimal and repetitive. In fact, all of the pieces are repetitive, which is never a problem so long as the melody is compelling.
In those terms, the guitar piece and the vocals work the best. The Jew’s harp piece takes some getting used to, but for me the experiment runs out of fun quickly. Likewise with the synth track: a bit too thin to carry the day on its own.
Magic Aum GiGi have already shown themselves to be restless and daring after only two releases. "Starring Keiko" is worth the effort, despite its lapses. Personally, a good guitar driven improv atones for a multitude of missteps. Here, there are only a few to surmount. This disc is a small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.
Mike WOOD.
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We proudly proclaimed Magic Aum Gigi's last lp, the mind blowing MMMM, to be our new favorite record when we reviewed it a while back, a dense blast of "raga metal" that pushed ALL our buttons. So we were super psyched when we heard there was a brand new lp, which is way different, but just as cool.
 Magic Aum Gigi is a Frenchman, and honorary member of the Acid Mothers Temple extended soul collective, but the music he makes on his own is well removed from the blown out psych of the AMT mothership. You won't find any raga metal here, instead, four extended tracks, each created with a single instrument or sound. From the Ash Ra homage on the cover, we knew we were in for something hypnotic and tripped out.
 The opener is worth the price of admission alone, the first half of side one is solo Jew's harp, heavily affected and processed, the twang and buzz looped into an epic expanse of Reichian rhythmic pulses, rife with all sorts of strange and subtle variations and sonic overtones, some so percussive it ends up sounding like some alien robotic transmission. Fans of Daniel Higgs' Jew's harp record will go nuts. And any one into dense looped drones will be in heaven. We could listen to just that track forever.
 The second track, and the rest of the first side is a mumbled soundscape assembled from just voices, a background glottal buzz, an undercurrent of rapid syllabic sibilance, all blurred and looped until the voices just sound like haunting tones, deftly arranged into slow shifting rhythms and sweeping moody arrangements. Cool.
 The flip side begins with a piece for just synthesizer, and is a crazy tangled chunk of chaotic sound, like a squiggly spaceship harpsichord gone haywire, garbled melodies, synth buzz, all atonal and slippery, dizzying and confusional, a bit like some stately Medieval court music, brought to the future and played by malfunctioning computers. Finally the record finishes off with a piece for just guitar, a gorgeous muted percussive drift, the notes all attack and very little decay, an ultra pizzicato assemblage of melodies, pulses and thumps, delayed and reverbed and woven into tranced out krautrocklike rhythms. So awesome.
 ULTRA LIMITED! Only 200 copies!!