Sungazer

Cathouse, Glasgow - 12/07/25

Adam Neely (bass), Shawn Crowder (drums), Jared Yee (saxophone), Joshua De La Victoria (guitar). Maddie Ashman (vocals, electronics, piano, cello)

Originally formed in Brooklyn, New York, Sungazer is an electro-avant jazz rock project involving a variety of top rank musicians gathered around the stable core of bassist Adam Neely (also a respected and widely literate online music educator) and drummer Shawn Crowder. This packed gig in Glasgow was the second time they have played Scotland’s largest city in the past couple of years, as part of an ever-expanding touring programme.

In essence, Sungazer is defined by pushing artistic envelopes and defying contradictions. Both enormously fun and deadly serious, their music is the elaborated sum of a considerable range of influences, ranging from fusion and metal to experimental, EDM, funk, shoegaze, electronica, folk, pop, classical… you name it. Their compositions and adaptations are delivered with a primary emphasis on breakneck virtuosity and unfeasibly shifting time signatures, punctuated by smaller moments of introspection and quiet beauty.

Unapologetically nerdy and mind-warping (think nested tuplets and all kinds of other rhythmic, harmonic and melodic trickery), Neely’s sonic adventurers rush around the stage in outlandishly garish multicoloured space costumes. They interrupt the ebb and growl of their music with a crowd-friendly narrative that wraps earnest artistic intent in dry humour. Encouragement of the audience to clap along or to move in a quasi-dance sequence is a sure sign that the band is about to make any attempt at pinning the beat for more than a few seconds all but impossible.

In a two hour set, plus a magically supersonic encore of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s ‘Vital Transformation’ (from their 1971 debut studio album, Inner Mounting Flame), Sungazer experimented with altered musical perceptions by playing fast and slow at the same time (‘Threshold’), sounding drunk, speeding up and slowing down (‘Machina’), crossing the thresholds of Northern Ethiopian and Celtic music (‘Whisky and Mace’) and much more.

Neely’s almost melancholic extended electric bass solo quoted Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’. Saxophonist Jared Yee created layers of sound from his instrument with electronics, live sampling and phasing on ‘Avant George’. Percussion shape-shifter Shawn Crowder demonstrated an extraordinary ability to mix and confuse different time signatures while using snare, kick drum and cymbals to retain a sense of flow. And guitarist Joshua De La Victoria combined moments of fusion shredding with detail and delicacy.

Among the many and various highlights were ‘Cool Seven’ (a short lesson in counting from five to seven and beyond while bypassing six), ‘Hot Saturn’ (which ends with a King Crimson-style schizoidesque section), ‘Sequencer’, and a piece from the first Sungazer  EP, ‘I Walk Alone’.

While the evening ended in raucous applause, it began with an impressive degree of (rock club) silence for uncategorisable opening act, Maddie Ashman’s often delicate and microtonally-influenced sonic paintings, emblemised by her recent track ‘Toffee’. These combine multi-layered vocals and chants, buzz and bell-like textures, electronic effects, piano, flute, cello and on other occasions guitar and bass.

In an era where it seems almost impossible to come up with anything truly new in art, composer and songwriter Ashman succeeds in taking us to what feels like a fresh musical space. 

* Sungazer: https://www.sungazermusic.com

* Maddie Ashman: https://maddieashman.bandcamp.com