daylies music: Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Monday, June 29, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Posted: 29 Jun 2009 02:28 PM PDT

This is a wonderfully out there 20 minutes of abstract pop. The French 3-piece, Gable, are obviously sonic grandchildren of the kind of thing Syd Barrett is famous for. But, if you’re going to be choosing your grandparents, you could do much worse than Syd Barrett. And Gable do enough with their influences to make it clear this is not pastiche. I’m OK starts out with a raw acoustic drum and snare wishing it was part of of a dubstep production, but the looped banjo filigree and and Tunng vocalisations steer it into its true place at the heart of weird glitch-folk pop. ‘Debut’ features non-sequiter spoken lyrics with a cut and paste approach to song construction, complete with snatches of big band brass stabs in place of a lead instrumental break.

Mandolins, nylon string guitars, toy pianos, xylophones, bells, strings and other at hand instruments are carefully sequenced amidst stray samples and grainy processing. With 13 tracks crammed in, some are obviously brief sonic ideas – the 55 second ‘Mon Cote Feminin’ a duet between cartoon punk guitar riff samples and melodica; ‘And’ a vignette of a single riff played out on all manner of electronic and acoustic instruments – but all feel somehow complete and purposeful. And some of the longer tracks, clocking in at just over two minutes, such as ‘Arm and Nose, Arms and Noise’ and ‘Sans Du Feu Dans Mes Mains’ are a reminder of the amount of detail that can be packed into small spaces. They feel like relative symphonies of pop songs with static and guitar but contain nothing extraneous, make their point beautifully and move on.

‘Charming’ is one of those reviewer words that gets thrown about to describe creative, loose, kitchen sink style releases. But it really does work for me in this case. A handful of simple sung hooks interspersed across a kaleidoscope of stray sounds and quirky jump-cuts. It doesn’t outstay its welcome but makes its brief running time count for much more than seems possible. Highly recommended.

Adrian Elmer