Igloo Magazine :: [Flashback 2025] Gayle Young and Robert Wheeler

This album sings as hard as it thumps

Two experimental composers, homemade instruments, outdated synths and a massive amount of creative brilliance. I can’t imagine how cool it would have been to witness this.

Canadian composer Gayle Young and Pere Ubu synthesist Robert Wheeler have broken silence and thrown it on the floor. This album sings as hard as it thumps. It’s a difficult release to pinpoint a direction when the sound is coming from everywhere. Gayle Young’s wonderfully crafted homemade instruments give humanity and assurance to the buzzing wheezing synthesizer speak. Together, they shouldn’t really work, but they certainly do in this case.

“Seaweed Slowly Shifting” sets the tone for what you will hear throughout. Constantly moving and breaking while being repaired at the same time, this piece is a great definition of difficult music. The stuttering synth, low string drones, and tapping on various surfaces, show a marvellous mastery of what is possible in experimental music. “Mariana’s Trench” is perfect marriage of electronics and human craftsmanship. The instruments fit so well together you’d almost think they were one. The seasick hard panning is locked down by the solid strings and quite frankly, is one of my favourite pieces on this album.

From Grimsby to Milan may not be for everyone. As a matter of fact, it’s an album that won’t appeal to most people. But the ones who get it, get it deeply. We become rabid fans of a stylistic excellence that I really hope to hear more of. Pick this album up if you are a fan of unbridled experimentation. If they ever make another album together, I will be the first one to grab it. This isn’t an every day listen but it is a perfect time spent in headphones at night, staring at the stars. It hugs you with a reassurance that there’s more out there than we think. Spectacular.