The music comes across as guileless and spirited, completely free of that deflated sense we begin to exhibit as we age and learn the limits of our lives. The world becomes harder as “truths” are discovered. That fulfillment is difficult to attain. That unicorns aren’t real. Treasure Mammal reminds us that we were smarter when we were children and we understood that the world is full of magic and crystals and joy and community. It is okay to remain guileless and spirited without fear of being crushed by another view of reality.
At the release show for Knewage at the Lost Leaf, Abe welcomes the audience around him onstage and moves indiscriminately in the small performance space, dancing with the audience, hoisting up crowd surfers, grabbing the shake weight.
The music is somewhat an amalgamation of kitsch sounds and whimsically adolescent melodies. Abe provides a host of playful songs to induce dreams in the waking and engulf the crowd in a giant joy bubble of unity. Goethe said, “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” Abe dreams big enough to invite others in to dance.
They say that dreamers are lonely because no one can share your memories of dreams. They occur in the isolated mind. But lonely dreamers need quest no further to share their secret slumbering selves, in Treasure Mammal we find communal dreaming at last.
Abelardo Andre Gil III (or Abe) performs as Treasure Mammal but after seeing his act live several times over the years I have finally come to understand that T.Mammal is not the man alone but the crowd as well who venture into the electronic-infused flights from the mundane into the higher planes of reality before known only to our dreaming minds. A small legion of regulars, many leotarded for the occasion, mix with the unaware newcomers.
