Giza

Giza is the second extended play of duo Gatekeeper, consisting of musicians Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkell. It was released in December 2010 by the label Merok Records. The duo made Giza with a setting of ancient ruins in mind, due to their interest of theories regarding ancient astronauts that they had garnered. They also expanded their film score influence to science fiction and fantasy films in addition to horror movies. Giza was promoted with music videos for all of the tracks. All of the videos were produced by production team Thunder Horse and were released online on the website 20JazzFunkGreats as well as on a limited-edition VHS tape. The video for "Chains" was ranked number ten on a list of best music videos of 2010 by the magazine XLR8R. Composition and critical analysis With Giza, Gatekeeper expanded their influence of horror film scores by composers such as John Carpenter to also include science fiction and fantasy films. The setting was also changed from the haunted forests of their debut extended play Optimus Maximus (2009) into ancient ruins in the middle of a desert for Giza. The reason for this change was that the group had got into theories regarding ancient astronauts, watching films like Chariots of the Gods (1970). Matt Arkell said that the desert had "this really bizarre exoticized feel to it, through cinema and popular culture over the past few decades." Gatekeeper cited religious vocal music, electronic body music, acid trance and early techno music as influences for making the music of Giza. Music journalists additionally noticed elements of the works of Cold Cave, The Hasbeens, Cabaret Voltaire and Kraftwerk and genres like Detroit techno and Italo disco. The Quietus journalist John Calvert called Giza "brilliantly period-precise," noting that its sonic elements sounded like they were made from "dodgy imitative synths, digital emulators, imperfect programming and tacky presets." He, as well as Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell, also spotlighted Gatekeeper's skill of creating tracks with elements from dark films while still keeping the songs danceable and exciting, which Calvert wrote "takes real panache." Some reviewers noted that the group went out of the boundaries of their main style and were freer with their sounds than on Optimus Maximus.