Gonjasufi: "Ancestors"

It starts with what sounds like an excerpt from Jeff Mangum’s woozy radio collages: first a wash of melancholy accordion, then a compressed drum loop, a couple micro-chopped sitars, and some bass notes. That’s it. The accordion fades back in, and there’s some electronic stuttering, but it’s the simplicity that makes “Ancestors” such an album-defining song. Flying Lotus’ production echoes musically what Gonja has said about his lyrics: “Bottled-up energy, then all of a sudden, the way it came out seemed perfect…it kept flowing.”

Gonja’s vocals are consistently hushed and slightly distorted throughout A Sufi and A Killer, his debut album, and while this occasionally makes it feel like a producer’s album, the whole thing hinges on his sad, eerie ramblings. “Ancestors, take my hand,” he says, and the vague, soulful plea—“of my skin and flesh I’m so ashamed”—feels almost terrifyingly lived-in, of internal workings becoming one with the mythology that they stem from. That kind of perfectly executed restraint, the kind with lots of thought implied but very little visible, is what makes the song so striking and otherworldly.

The patient confidence of “Ancestors” and its parent record are refreshing and instructive when kids like Neon Indian can do their own experiments with compression and end up on Late Night with an embarrassing imbalance in their swagger-to-substance ratio. That a debut single can sound this old while still having the visceral, head-turning qualities needed to stand out is both reassuring and sort of mind-blowing.