After a 5-year hiatus Gazpacho return with Magic 8-Ball, based on the concept of chance and fate. These Norwegian artists now focus on more concise pieces in contrast to the sprawling dark epic grandeur of Fireworker. However, Gazpacho have lost none of their sense of thoughtful introspection, and their ability to make insightful observations within fascinating musical frames.
Strangely, this was not the album they originally intended to create after Fireworker. Their original idea of basing an album on the theme of an incoming comet which will devastate Earth, and mankind’s peculiarly casual attitude to their imminent demise, was somewhat overtaken by the 2021 satire movie ‘Don’t Look Up’. Consequently, Gazpacho felt they had to scrap that idea and start again, salvaging only one song from that abandoned piece. Gazpacho have summed up the concept behind Magic 8-Ball thus:
“We removed God and left nothing to replace him. We started believing in the void, handing everything over to chance. Magic 8-Ball is about someone who gambles everything, believing that eventually everyone gets their break. That the universe is fair if you just wait long enough. But the break never comes. He loses everything and is left with the realization that it was never fate, only his own choices. His responsibility. His idea.
We didn’t become more rational. We just found new things to believe in and built a new magical reality to replace the one we tore down. Stocks. Crypto. Luck. Magical ideas pretending to be modern.”
A fascinating perspective – nothing is ever straightforward from Gazpacho and their thought-provoking songs are presented here with more focus… and dare we say it, sometimes in more accessible, almost commercial in format at times, which is not a bad thing! This should not come as a surprise when one considers that main music composer Thomas Andersen has also been known to write popular advertising jingles, and vocalist Jan Henrik Ohme works for a major record label in Norway. After a mysterious synth / vocoder intro, the distinctly catchy We are Strangers ascends into the rocky dream pop heavens filled with anthemic choruses, pulsing 80’s synth riffs, gorgeous melodies and lush harmonies, reminiscent of Depeche Mode. Robert Risberget Johansen plays some outstanding cascading drums once the song’s wave breaks. One could easily imagine fellow Norwegian’s Prog/Pop minstrels Meer rocking out with this outstanding and infectious song.
Thomas Andersen has explained on the Kscope Podcast that these 8 songs represent 8 different characters with 8 different fates, all with ‘8 different shakes of the 8-Ball’. He also later realised (in the shower!) that each character is also trapped in their situation. The Music Hall, Carnival-tinged title track Magic 8-Ball is new territory for Gazpacho, rolling in like some sort of circus act on Andersen’s plinking piano and sounds akin to a brass band. Drummer Robert Risberget Johansen drives this almost comical song along with a sense of swing, and Jan Henrik Ohme inhabits the persona of a ringmaster or theatre MC, directing the proceedings with a sense of menace and a glint in his eye.
The album begins in a rather more typically Gazpacho style with the more regal extended Starlings, gliding in on the wings of Mikael Krømer’s melancholic violin hovering above Andersen’s softly chiming piano set in a spectral synth soundscape. Andersen has explained that this a song about a person who is in love but feels if they reveal their real self their partner will be gone – a very strange kind of trap. What immediately strikes you about this song and the whole album is that Jan Henrik Ohme has never sounded so good and so clear in his singing, imbuing every note with his usual emotion. Mid-way through Andersen snakes a whimsical sounding, almost fluty sounding synth across the sky, swooping and twisting like a starling. Acoustic guitars still keep us aloft until the whole band breaks in more forcefully, recapitulating the main theme but with so much more power. It’s a truly impressive gateway to the album.
The one song to survive the abandoned comet themed project is the peculiar and haunting Sky King, based on the story of an airline baggage handler, Richard “Beebo” Russell, who stole an empty aircraft and killed himself by crashing into an island. Sky King is a beautifully multi-layered piece which opens with eerie, synth sounds, quirky noises and distant spasms of sound in the background. Jan Henrik Ohme gives a heartbreaking vocal which rises gloriously as the full band briefly fill the void. The restrained opening theme returns with soft percussion and Kristian ‘Fido’ Torp’s subtle bass underpinning the sense of fate… and in the background we can hear a jet hurtling towards the ground, and a wall of sound erupts before receding into the delicate coda. Gazpacho fit more ideas into 5 minutes than some artists manage in an album – this song evokes such a combined sense of grandeur and tragedy as the main protagonist Sky King goes out in such dramatic fashion. The short piece Ceres (named after the Roman Goddess of Agriculture) touches on how moving from our original natural state, into agriculture, Mankind trapped themselves with notions of property. Nevertheless, this feels lighter with an almost mischievous keyboard opening, and Jon-Arne Vilbo‘s swathes of guitars rising in power until the song fades into the distance. Vilbo’s textured guitars are an essential element in the Gazpacho sound palette – never strident or flamboyant but crucially adding weight and subtlety in turn, adding colour to the whole sound throughout the album.
Gingerbread Man is an expansive, multi-faceted piece as we journey through rain swept soundscapes into a more assertive passage before we fall back to the earlier theme. Strangely, even though it is one of the longer and more progressive pieces it is not as engaging as some of the much shorter songs on the album. Immerwahr is based on the story Clara Immerwahr, a German chemist who worked with her Nobel prize winning husband scientist Fritz Haber. They helped develop the deadly mustard gas of the First World War, and her eventual suicide may have been related to her feelings about the use of science to produce such lethal weapons as these final dark lyrics suggest:
Oh, The bed was made
Oh in the wind there’s a message, Oh in the wind – a message’
Immerwahr is an extended and engaging expedition through sweeping rock and more pastoral delicate passages, successfully taking us through light and dark, soft and heavy to its final stark, chilling conclusion.
The elegant Unrisen which reflects on the finality and distance imposed on us all by death, with a melody based on a Russian orthodox Easter hymn, feels like a ‘bookend’ piece musically to the opening Starling. Strangely, given its theme, Unrisen is not a dour or depressing piece. Quite the opposite in fact, filled with exquisite almost regal delicate melodies and some utterly beautiful lyrics sung with such tenderness:
Reflections of who we are, Bonfires in autumn
Poppies in the silent night, Lost to the fading light’
References to the ‘Sea of Tranquility’ and the ‘Starry Sea’, along with a distinctly cosmic sounding synth passage, gives Unrisen an Astral, distant feel. In that lushly evoked sense of distance and beauty there is some strange comfort and solace about the prospect of death.
Gazpacho’s twelfth studio album was resurrected from the ashes of an abandoned project about a catastrophe, and yet out of that adversity Magic 8-Ball is a beautifully realised triumph of concise poetic and moving songs – maybe those ultimately inspirational circumstances were just fate?
Magic 8-Ball is filed with beguiling melodies, stirring rock sequences, fascinating lyrical themes and exquisite songwriting. There’s every chance that in Magic 8-Ball Gazpacho will rightfully be considered to have released one of the best albums of 2025.
TRACK LISTING
01. Starling (9:12)
02. We are Strangers (4:47)
03. Sky King (5:02)
04. Ceres (3:22)
05. Gingerbread Men (7:10)
06. Magic 8-Ball (3:10)
07. Immerwahr (7:41)
08. Unrisen (6:14)
Total Time – 46:38
MUSICIANS
Jan Henrik Ohme – Vocals
Thomas Andersen – Keyboards, Programming
Jon-Arne Vilbo – Guitars
Mikael Krømer – Violin, Guitar
Kristian ‘Fido’ Torp – Bass
Robert Risberget Johansen – Drums, Percussion
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Kscope
Country of Origin: Norway
Date of Release: 31st October 2025
DISCOGRAPHY
– Bravo (2003)
– When Earth Lets Go (2004)
– Firebird (2005)
– Night (2007) | (Reissued 2012)
– Tick Tock (2009) (Reissued 2015)
– A Night at Loreley (live) (2009)
– Missa Atropos (2010)
– London (live) (2011)
– March of Ghosts (2012)
– Demon (2014)
– Night of the Demon (live) (2015)
– Molok (2015)
– Introducing Gazpacho (Compilation) (2015)
– Soyuz (2018)
– Fireworker (2020)
– Fireworking At St. Croix (live) (2022)
– Magic 8-Ball (2025)
LINKS
Gazpacho – Website | Facebook | YouTube | X | Instagram
