About

GORILLA MASK is:
Peter Van Huffel – Alto & Baritone Saxophones, Electronics
Roland Fidezius – Electric Bass & Effects
Rudi Fischerlehner – Drums & Percussion

Gorilla Mask is a Berlin based trio founded in 2009 by the Belgian-Canadian saxophonist Peter Van Huffel and features bassist Roland Fidezius and drummer Rudi Fischerlehner. Their music blends jazz and free-improvisation with influences from rock, punk and metal, and their distinctive style has often been referred to as thrash-jazz. Since the band’s inception they have released five albums to critical acclaim: four on the renowned Portuguese label Clean Feed Records – “Mind Raid” (2022), “Brain Drain” (2019), “Iron Lung” (2017), “Bite My Blues” (2014) – and their first album, “HOWL!” was released in 2012 on the German label Between the Lines. Gorilla Mask has twice toured across Canada in 2013 and 2018 with performances at the country’s top jazz festivals and venues, and has given numerous concerts around Europe at such festivals and venues as Jazz im Goethe Garten Lisbon, Circulo de Bellas Artes Madrid (for the Goethe Institute), Mama Jazz Vilnius, Fusion Festival Germany, Klangfest Gallneukirchen, Porgy & Bess Vienna, Stockwerk Graz, Handelsbeurs Ghent, Schokoladen e.V., Jazzexzess and Jazzkeller 69 e.V. Berlin, to name a few. The band has received numerous grants, tour and project funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Goethe Institute and Musik Fonds e.V. and has been celebrated in hundreds of articles and reviews worldwide for their albums and live performances. Gorilla Mask has collaborated with the renowned mastering engineer James Plotkin for three of their releases and has performed and collaborated with a number of world recognised musicians such as: Gebhard Ullmann, Sofia Salvo, Matthias Schubert, Olaf Rupp, Lina Allemano, Matthias Müller, Teun Verbruggen, Andreas Willers, Michael Attias, Dr. Richard Scott, Eliad Wagner, and many more.

GM PRESS TEXT:

Ground-shaking grooves, hammering rhythms and wailing melodies, layered with explosive no-holds-barred improvisations: GORILLA MASK is a type of sonic madness roaring with a restless, implacable energy that totters dangerously on the verge of total chaos. They craft spirals of sound in 4 or 5 dimensions, jabbing you in the ribs as they mess with your brain – the ebb and flow of an actuely aware trio of musicians who know what they want and know how to get it. Canadian ex-pat Peter Van Huffel is a saxophonist out of Coltrane, Ayler and Zorn, but he frames his improvisational forays in the context of a trio with hard rock dynamics, riding the churn of Roland Fidezius’ frenetic bass and Rudi Fischerlehner’s pulsating drum kit like a surfer on the biggest wave he’s ever seen.

GORILLA MASK is the product of a constantly active, hyper-intelligent hive-mind of three virtuosos; their music a mishmash of punk, rock and metal influences rooted in jazz, free-improvisation and the modern avant-garde. A collision of styles which form the key to the band’s identity. This is bold, audacious 21st Century music writ huge, with innumerable influences and tendencies, gritty and urban, intellectual and ready to run a marathon.

Text adapted from the liner notes to “HOWL!” (2012, Between the Lines) and “Bite my Blues” (2014, Clean Feed) by Dave Wayne (Santa Fe, NM, USA)