Composer Simon Hanes’ daring and irreverent GARGANTUA is available March 27, 2026 via Pyroclastic Records. On Sunday, March 29 at 4:45 pm they play at Big Ears!
“Albums like this do not appear according to a schedule. They show up unexpectedly like a sudden storm, rearranging not just the patio furniture but the very air itself.” – Mike Borella, Avant Music News
“An epic new work… leaves listeners on the edge of their seat … challenged in an extremely exciting and interesting way. And what an experience it would have been to hear this work in concert!” – Jan Granlie, Salt Peanuts
“… a music that fuses the influences of Hildegarde von Bingen and Tibetan Buddhist choral singing, baroque music and edgy modernism, alpine horns and heavy rock. The combination of vocal polyphony (those harmonized glissandos!), low brass, and rock rhythm becomes a whole that is totally unique and deeply spiritual…. Hanes’ brilliantly realized compositions bring us to the brink of an abyss of wonder and terror.” — Ken Shimamoto, The Stash Dauber
“Complex and richly imaginative, the work unfolds as a conceptual musical journey inspired by film, folklore, and the absurd spirit of Monty Python.” – Thierry de Clémensat, Paris Move
“This is beautiful, scary, simple, and complex music filled with extremes and contradictions…Hanes’ Gargan
In drawing inspiration from the work of 16th-century novelist François Rabelais for his audacious new album, GARGANTUA, composer Simon Hanes has crafted a daring and irreverent set of music that indulges in every aspect of its source’s colossal appetites. Set for release on March 27, 2026 via Pyroclastic Records, produced by David Breskin, GARGANTUA marks an intrepid leap forward for Hanes’ raucous compositional vision – and if that leap should carry his vision over a cliff into a yawning abyss, all the better for its voracious desire to plunge headlong into the heretofore unexplored.
Rabelais’ pentalogy Gargantua and Pantagruel is a mammoth work in every sense – a five-volume satire tracing the history of a father-and-son pair of literal giants, overflowing with intricate wordplay and scabrous, often scatological, humor. Condemned as obscene in its time, it has long since taken its place in the literary canon as a satirical masterwork, a precursor of Joyce in its weave of elegant, inventive prose and exuberant vulgarity.
Similarly, GARGANTUA is bracingly excessive in its every aspect – pendulum swings from lyrical beauty to corrosive noise, jarring stylistic shifts that collide the transcendent mysticism of Hildegard of Bingen with the blistering metal of Behemoth; the polyphony of Tibetan Buddhist singing with the sonic sculptures of Edgard Varèse and the salacious swagger of Led Zeppelin. What emerges from these incongruous antecedents is wholly original, digesting but never echoing Hanes’ influences and reimagining their aspects on a grandiose scale.
“I approached this project thinking, ‘How could I write music that would represent the ecstatic levels of feeling that I experience in my most profound musical moments as either a listener or a performer?’” Hanes muses. “Sometimes the only way is to have three drummers and three bass players go completely ballistic on their instruments.”
As Hanes suggests, the ensemble he assembled for GARGANTUA is as over-the-top as the music he’s penned for it. The brass, voice and rhythm instrumentation is unique enough on its own, even more so in triplicate. The music is scored for three drum sets (Jon Starks, Matt Bent, Kevin Murray), three electric basses (Anna Abondolo, Jesse Heasly, Trevor Dunn), three trombones (Jen Baker, Jacob Garchik, Colin Babcock), three French horns (Kevin Newton, Noah Fotis, Blair Hamrick) and three soprano voices (Priya Carlberg, Isa Crespo Pardo, Jolee Gordon).
Hanes is the first to admit, “Three drummers is just too many drummers. And everybody knows three bass players is way too many bass players. So if the immediate impetus for the piece is that there’s too many of these things than convention dictates, what could I do compositionally and orchestrationally that would justify that decision?”
Hanes’ initial concept for the band was simply a bass and drum sextet. The full scope of GARGANTUA burst upon him during a 2022 hike in Molde Norway, the immense Nordic wilderness suggesting a music that could capture such overwhelming beauty and daunting perspective. “I tend to get quiet and reflective in context of the natural world,” Hanes says. “For some reason, the idea of Gargantua and Pantagruel came into my mind again, and all of a sudden I thought, ‘Horns.’ Then I realized that voices would add warmth and humanity to this imposing ensemble, and suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and that’s when things started to get weird – and by weird I mean good.”
To compose the music, Hanes spent three weeks in artistic isolation in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, where the towering beauty and potential for violent eruption made its own impact on the compositional process. “My initial fascination with volcanism was born out of the desire to understand temporal-relationships which dwarfed humanity’s own experience of the passage of time. Volcanoes, with their slow breath, primordial formations, and centuries-long pauses between eruptions, are a perfect example of an extra-human timescale. Portals to hell, realms of mythological guardians, destructive, chaotic, impossible for human beings to fathom: these are terror-inducing volcanic attributes which have so fired my imagination while I was working on GARGANTUA”
GARGANTUA simultaneously functions as a stand-alone composition, a concept album, and a suite of distinct pieces. Thematically, certain movements are united by common themes and underlying emotions:
A Series Of Waves Tremble In A Sea Of Blood, Moirai, and I AM are shaped by a feeling of deep reverence, a grave awareness of the delicacy of life and a sense of profound hidden meaning.
Knockandrow, Lacerated By A Flying Shard, and Submit To The Fabulosity are written in Rabelais’ bawdy, satiric spirit. In Fabulosity, for instance, the vocalists are instructed to scream insults directed at Hanes specifically, while the rest of the ensemble plays an abstract disco behind them.
Gigantes, Lucifer/Aureum Chaos and Hekla 1970 are imbued with a feeling of “ecstatic”, explosive terror – a concept which has been a fundamental part of the GARGANTUA compositional process, and which is reflected in Hanes’ obsession with the scientific and mythological power of volcanoes.
The Number Of The Beast Is 666, is a brassy rococo piece with almost completely non-functional harmony, odd time signatures, and a sense of regal grandiosity, breaking any and all expectations of what an ensemble as eclectic as GARGANTUA’s is capable of.
The tension between chaos and order is central to GARGANTUA. Hanes says, “That balance makes this an expression of my musical identity. I’ve been deeply affected by music that is in communication with something really profound, but also the vast tradition of transgressive, satirical music. That’s what Rabelais was so aware of: life is sublime, but it’s also ridiculous.”
Simon Hanes
Simon Hanes is a California-born, Brooklyn-based composer, performer and arranger. His work bridges diverse interests including: soundtrack music from 1960s/70s Italian films, contemporary classical music, renaissance music, 70s hard rock, Ukrainian Trembita music, and non-idiomatic improvisation. Hanes composes for, conducts, and performs extensively with his Italian soundtrack-pop large ensemble Tredici Bacci and his Experimental Surf outfit Tsons Of Tsunami. Hanes has collaborated and performed with a large number of New York’s downtown and experimental music composers and groups. He is a frequent collaborator with John Zorn, most notably via his extreme noise-thrash trio Trigger, which has performed extensively in the US and Europe as part of Zorn’s bagatelles project. He has also worked as an orchestrator and conductor for the legendary producer Hal Wilner. In addition, Hanes writes music for film and television, teaches, and works extensively as an orchestrator/arranger/music director.
Pyroclastic Records
Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016. By supporting artists in the dissemination of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, providing opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art. Its albums often feature artwork by prominent visual artists—Ellsworth Kelly, Julian Charriére, Dike Blair, Raymond Pettibon and Gabriel de la Mora among recent examples.
2026 Pyroclastic projects include albums from Kris Davis and the Lutosławski Quartet and Brandon Seabrook, as well as newcomers Simon Hanes GARGANTUA and Yvonne Rogers’ first solo piano album.
Simon Hanes – GARGANTUA
Pyroclastic Records – PR 45 – Recorded December 13-14, 2024
Release date March 27, 2026
Produced by David Breskin
simonhanes.com
pyroclasticrecords.com
pyroclasticrecords.bandcamp.
simonhanes.bandcamp.com
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