Elephant Gym – Highway

Taiwan’s Elephant Gym feel through it all on new standalone single “Highway.”

Formed in 2012 in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, the experimental trio Elephant Gym interlace threads of jazz, electronic, and classical into a singular patchwork of contemporary math- and post-rock. At once evoking the towering, boisterous essence of elephants, and the acrobatic, dexterous nature of a gymnast, Elephant Gym’s sound feeds off tension and unlikely contrasts.

Elephant Gym songs often find bassist KT Chang as the lead voice, her nimble, expressive playing style is a signature imprint of the Elephant Gym sonic character. Sibling Tell Chang meshes deftly on guitar and occasionally keys, with Chia-Chin Tu’s elastic drumming as a malleable anchorpoint between his bandmates’ funk and jazz chops. The trio’s tenure has seen the release of a handful of EPs + live recordings and four previous full lengths, Angle (2014), Underwater (2018), Dreams (2022), and World (2023).

This time around they’ve sidelined the vocals on their latest single “Highway” for an instrumental curve, bringing you into their microworld of starry sky melody and dizzying, angular rhythms. Ping-ponging through a wide range of emotions, the three minute noodler kicks off with a guitar riff that is warm, calming, and hopeful before taking a tonal shift into something moodier with titanic drums that thump and cut like a serrated knife. It eventually loops back to the brightness of its opening and clears the way for a soft landing.

Of the new song, the band writes this bit of prose:

“For those who are on the road–whether walking, driving, or riding a high-speed train–the passing scenery reminds us that we are growing, and also dying; that we are setting out, and slowly making our way home.”

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