Norwegian art-rockers Gazpacho have returned with their first LP in five years. Magic 8-Ball is a concept album consisting of what keyboard player Thomas Andersen calls eight “short stories about people who find themselves in extraordinary situations.”
The album’s title is taken from the spherical toy that offers up a set of random phrases every time it’s shaken, so the user can employ fate, the gods or luck to help make decisions – a reference to the album’s overall theme. “Each story is about a roll of the dice,” says Anderson. “You could say the people in the songs are victims of randomness.”
Things could have been very different. After finishing 2020’s Fireworker, Gazpacho began working on a concept album based on a comet hitting Earth and the global population’s blasé reaction to their impending demise.
“And then Leonardo DiCaprio released the movie Don’t Look Up, and it was the exact same storyline,” says Andersen. “It was as if he’d bugged the room! So we decided to scrap the whole thing – it wouldn’t have looked cool to release an album based on a Leonardo DiCaprio film.”
They started again from scratch, writing and recording Magic 8-Ball in the keyboardist’s home studio. Only one piece of music survived from the abandoned album, which became the song Sky King, inspired by the true story of an airline baggage handler who stole a plane and flew it into a remote island, killing himself.
Andersen is convinced the tough decision to abandon their disaster-movie plot was a blessing in disguise. “We’ve made a lot of long, atmospheric, repetitive records,” he says. “This time we thought, ‘Screw it, let’s go for something different and make some noise.’ It’s partly because we’re scared of becoming middle-aged proggers!”
The video for lead track 8-Ball features a cult that forms around the titular object. “You see an 8-ball and you see an eight,” says Anderson, “but in their eyes it’s an infinity symbol – you’ve been looking at it the wrong way. The video is almost like an ad for the cult!”
He reports that Gazpacho have already recorded half an hour of music for their next record, which they plan to release at the end of 2026. “This album has stirred the pot and given us a lot more creativity.”
Magic 8-Ball is on sale now via Kscope.
