GAJOOB Review by Bryan Baker
Daniel Prendiville has been a GAJOOB mainstay for a quarter century now—woven through the fabric of so many projects we’ve stitched together: from the Homemade Music Shop to the remix-happy Tapegerm Collective. His presence has always been marked by a DIY integrity and sly sonic inventiveness, often landing somewhere between outsider rock and post-electronic weird-pop. But like any artist worth returning to, he keeps surprising us.
Hooray For The Whole Array is a 10-track distillation of Prendiville’s creative curiosity. It’s part instrumental, part song-based, part commentary, and entirely personal in its captivating way. He tosses genre labels aside with a grin—”partially proggy, partially Krautrock, mostly impersonal, partially too-clever-for-its-own-good”—and you get the sense he relishes the contradiction.
He uses drum machines not just rhythmically, but melodically—his beats sing. There’s a trick to programming drum machines that is distinct from working with loops. And those hometapers that thoroughly own that space have a kind of unique magic. You don’t know him, by my friend and Baby Fred collaborator, Joe Maki, would labor over the programming whereas I did not. But I appreciated the results. The songs here remind me of that.
Prendiville’s arrangements are sharply constructed but never sterile. Guitars, synths, and vocals are given space to breathe—each mix sounds like it was meant to sound that way, yet also carries a loose improv sort of feel that never takes itself very seriously. There’s care in the sonic sculpting. And underneath the polish, there’s a crackling thread of social commentary, not in-your-face protest, but a mature, reflective discontent—an “I’ve seen a thing or two” energy that feels grounded and human and is forced to laugh at the absurdity of it. Maybe that’s age. Maybe that’s the times. Either way, it hits.
If you’re new to Prendiville, this is a great point of entry. If you’ve known his work for years like I have, Hooray For The Whole Array is both a culmination and a fresh spark—a reminder that our best homemade music is made by people who never stop exploring.
Media: Digital.
Visit Reincheque Recordings
Bandcamp URL: https://danielprendiville.bandcamp.com/album/hooray-for-the-whole-array
