We’re excited to premiere Grand Street Feast, the forthcoming 7” by Gitkin ahead of his debut album Five Star Motel out on April 6th on New York imprint Wonderwheel Recordings.
Self-taught, sometimes-musician and mysterious motel-hopper Gitkin crisscrossed the US in the late 70s selling knockoff Gibson guitars to the diverse & disparate groups of immigrants from all four corners of the globe who were coming to the US during the second great migration.
His trade of illicit wares at dusty motel stop-offs facilitated exchanges with fellow travellers – part old stories and legends, part musical dialogue – that provided a steady drip of anecdotes and often escalated into late night jam sessions with nightstands and mini-bar contents repurposed for extra percussion.
It was these memorable encounters that allowed Gitkin to gradually stitch together a patchwork of worldly sounds and document his changing perspectives and sporadic friendships on cassette tape. Now those initial lo-fi recordings, scratchy and stuttering, inspire the ethos for a full-length LP that takes listeners on a journey through hypnotic indie rock, Peruvian chicha and Tuareg influences paying homage to the younger Gitkin and his years of cultural navigation on the road.
Grand Street Feast is emblematic of how Gitkin recycles and filters the styles he encountered through his own psychedelic lens, creating a sound rooted in other, but deeply his own. It charts a sand-dusted melodic funk misadventure that presents the running theme of dominant folkloric string instruments and an onus on his trusty guitar to take the reigns; a raft to navigate a sun-dappled stream of ideas.
Five Star Motel is next in the line of stellar releases already put out this year by global music innovators Wonderwheel Recordings. The label founded by artist and globe-trotter Nickodemus dropped Thornato’s sundrenched crossover EP Back It Up and a remix album of Lagartijeando’s Latin-inspired pychadelic dance album El Gran Poder in February with a recent leaked track from Nickodemus’ next LP keeping us all on the edge of our seats.
You can pre-order Gitkin’s Five Star Motel here.