Location: New York City, New York
Country: USA
Genre: Progressive rock, world music
Full length: Pistoleros
Format: Digital
Label: World Funk Orchestra
Release date: September 12, 2025
Mac Gollehon, a multi-instrumentalist from Manhattan, New York, is recognized for expanding traditional genres with a style known as "modern world fusion." This seems broader than many prior efforts to mix music from different lifestyles and cultures, but does it encompass everything it implies?
With his constantly evolving band, The Hispanic Mechanics, "Pistoleros" seeks to capture a wide range of feelings, from love and beauty to horror and insanity, to immerse you in its complex details. Progressive Caribbean jazz-electronica presents a unique way to transform music into a modern cinematic experience, blending traditional and modern musical styles. What kind of effort is needed to accomplish this, and how successful is the result?
From the outset, it’s obvious that while his music is structured and follows a clear path from start to finish, Gollehon makes use of each part equally, not sticking to any specific method or rule. What comes from his creativity is incredibly unique and innovative, making it hard to fully understand. When you think you can grasp the developing song, something shows up that is completely different from the last one you heard.
The band expertly combines Latin horns and jazzy rhythms with samples, programmed beats, and complex electronic sounds, and mixes tribal percussion with jazz horns and atmospheric keyboards, allowing their creativity to flourish. With extensive experience in rock, reggae, jazz, and Latin music, Gollehon carefully chooses the elements that fit each song's theme and decides how much passion to infuse into the performance.
Gollehon has recently worked with experimental extreme bands such as Today Is The Day, Chrome Waves, and Altars Of The Moon, and he collaborates regularly with Gridfailure. These partnerships seem to have rubbed off on him, as seen in the album's seamless blend of its rough elements and lush atmosphere, leading to a broader cultural and avant-garde exploration of rhythm-and-blues and country-and-western.
The sum of its parts is sometimes filled with existential energy, other times with primal energy, to evoke profound animation, ardor, perplexity and dread. Gollehon had a knack for resonating through the tracks he recorded to bring out those emotions effectively. Moreover, he has a gift for engaging the audience with sections that stray even further from the usual, reminiscent of the Italian progressive rockers Goblin and the score of "Rosemary's Baby."
Mac Gollehon & The Hispanic Mechanics have produced a theatrical trailer to advertise the album, featuring an appearance by Vincent Pastore from the well-known TV series The Sopranos. The theatrical trailer can be viewed at Vimeo. –Dave Wolff
Track list:
1. Pistoleros
2. Stud Poker
3. Sign It
4. Mac Attack
5. Vinny “Bay Parkway Snake”
6. Killer Joe “Zillionario”
7. Atiba “SideEye” Powers
8. Stacked Deck
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