Review: Gyratory System – The Sound-Board Breathes

Artist: Gyratory System
Title: The Sound-Board Breathes
Label: Angular
Genre: Rock/indie
Format: CD, Digital
Buy From: Juno Records, Juno Download

Gyratory System’s debut album takes its inspiration from a museum in Brentford that exhibits antiquated musical instruments, piano rolls and wind-up one man bands.

“That,” says the bands frontman Andrew Blick, “is the kind of sound I’d like to think we’re aiming for.” The Sound-Board Breathes, with its title taken from the epic Milton poem Paradise Lost, has left me struggling for words.

What I assumed to be the conventional guitar-bass-drums-vocals, immediately exposes itself as a random electronic experiment, bringing in trumpets, bongos and French horns.

The closest I can come to classifying this music is through the 80’s electro-psychedelica. As with all experimental creations not everything they attempt is successful, but the tracks “Yowser, Yowser, Yowser” and “Tinseltown” stick in the memory – both are beautiful examples of their bizarre invention.

Peculiar; yes, but this is some seriously danceable stuff throughout.

Review: Peter Carroll