Album Review: Giraffe Controls the Chaos on The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums
Four musicians walk into Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles and hop onstage without a setlist. Nobody knows exactly what the music's going to sound like. By the time the improvised jam simmered down, a new band was born. Welcome, Giraffe...
Featuring Dave Harrington of Darkside, Robert Walter of The Greyboy Allstars, bassist Spencer Zahn, and drummer Kosta Galanopoulos of Rio Kosta, Giraffe's debut album, The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums, captures the quartet taking that initial chemistry into the studio and seeing how far it can stretch.
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Released through ORG Music and Aquarium Drunkard, The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums was recorded in a single day at Los Angeles' 64 Sound. Across its eleven tracks, Giraffe moves between psychedelic rock, jazz, funk, ambient soundscapes, and open-ended improvisation. There's no shortage of musical experience in the room, but the record's appeal ignites when those individual experiences intertwine.
Giraffe knows when to let a groove simmer, when to open the doors to stranger territory, and when to bring the whole operation back down to earth. It's an album built around musicians who know their instruments well enough to make room for the unexpected.
Giraffe: The Accidental Quartet
Giraffe didn't emerge from some carefully assembled supergroup blueprint. They came together through a chain of spontaneous encounters, beginning with an improvised set at Gold-Diggers, the LA underground staple.
Harrington, Walter, Zahn, and Galanopoulos met rather serendipitously without any established material or thought out sounds to chase.
Shortly after that first performance, a second session confirmed that their chemistry wasn't a one-night wonder, so the group went straight to 64 Sound to start recording.
Captured in a single day, the resulting album preserved the energy of a group still discovering what it could do.
There's a difference between improvisation and simply playing without a plan. Giraffe's advantage is that its members understand how to listen as closely as they play. The group has the freedom to wander, but it rarely loses sight of the groove. That balance becomes the defining feature of its debut. Their arrangements leave space for ideas to surface, develop, and occasionally take a sharp turn. A guitar phrase can become the starting point for a keyboard detour just like switching up the rhythm can pull the whole band to another realm.
Giraffe's Towering Inferno of Ideas
The album’s instrumental chemistry does much of the heavy lifting. Dave Harrington shifts between guitar, twelve-string, electric sitar, sampler, and electronics as Robert Walter moves through electric piano, organ, Clavinet, and synthesizers. Holding down the grooves, Spencer Zahn’s fretless bass and Kosta Galanopoulos’ drums truly keep things grounded without boxing the others in. They know how to tap into deep pockets of rhythm while leaving enough room for each player to shine.
“Room of Forgotten Names” is a highlight, trading the album’s heavier rhythmic moments for shimmering textures and calm, cinematic interplay. The two-part “Boogie in The House of Secrets” takes a darker turn, adding some contrast to the record’s hazier stretches. Further along in the album, “Gate of Crimson Silence,” “Jumpcut Colors,” and “Thunder Rolls” continue the quartet’s back-and-forth between atmosphere, groove, and improvisational detours.
Giraffe’s best moments come from resisting the urge to overplay. A groove takes hold, an instrument starts testing its limits, and the others follow without rushing toward a payoff. The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums stays elevated when the group trusts that chemistry and lets the small details seep through.
Who Let the Giraffe Out (In the Studio)?
The personalities behind Giraffe are worth investigating because each member arrives with a distinct musical history. The group isn't built around a single scene or a shared genre allegiance. Its members have spent years venturing across different corners of experimental rock, jazz, funk, and electronic music.
Dave Harrington is perhaps best known for Darkside, his project with Nicolas Jaar, but his work stretches well beyond that association. His guitar playing and electronic experimentation make him a natural fit for a project that treats instrumental roles as flexible rather than fixed. On this record, his contributions include guitar, twelve-string guitar, electric sitar, sampler, and electronics. He also produced the album, handling its mixing and mastering.
Robert Walter brings a different kind of history. As a founding member of The Greyboy Allstars, he has spent decades working in the territory where jazz, soul, funk, and psychedelic grooves meet. His keyboard setup filled with organ, Clavinet, and synthesizers, gives Giraffe much of its tonal character. Walter's presence helps keep the band's exploratory side connected to the physical pleasure of a good groove.
Spencer Zahn's fretless bass provides an especially useful counterweight to the shifting arrangements. His work as a bassist and composer has taken him through a range of instrumental and collaborative projects, often exploring spacious textures and unconventional approaches to composition. In Giraffe, Zahn's bass helps establish how much room the other instruments have to explore.
Kosta Galanopoulos completes the lineup behind the drums and percussion. Known for his work with Rio Kosta and a wide range of artists across the independent music world, he brings a rhythmic flexibility that suits the group's changing moods. His role isn't just to keep time while the other musicians jam. Percussion gives their music its physical character.
The production reinforces the collective nature of the project. Engineered by Tyler Karmen at 64 Sound and produced, mixed, and mastered by Harrington, the album preserves the immediacy of the session without making the recording feel unfinished.
The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums captures four musicians who know when to push, when to pull back, and when to let an unexpected idea take over. There’s plenty of technical skill on display, but Giraffe never turns the record into a competition for the spotlight. Its best moments come from the group's intuitive chemistry and an obvious enjoyment of jamming together.
The album may wander, but it rarely feels lost. In a landscape crowded with carefully assembled studio productions, there's something refreshing about hearing a band that leaves the tape rolling while sparks fly. If this is what Giraffe can record in a single day, imagine what happens when the session runs longer.
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