Glockabelle

Proclaiming her style “glockrock,” the Francophone free-form bandleader Annabelle Cazes A.K.A. Glockabelle has crafted an intricate and beautifully composed pandemonium for her new EP Wolf BBQ. Incorporating her classical piano background with bold musical lawlessness, the New York-based Cazes — a featured instrumentalist on this year’s Go! Team album The Scene Between — experiments with synth-pop and glockenspiel within a dance-rock framework. Wolf BBQ is unanticipated adventure with each shimmer and bell glimmer on “Washing Machine” and the whimsical video game-esque “Gazelle.” - SPIN

While Beck’s songs for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World made sense for the inter-film group Sex Bob-omb, they never really felt as contemporary and frenetic as the film itself. A proper soundtrack would feature music as hyper, glitchy, and spasmodic as the movie it accompanied. That’s the kind of world suggested by Glockabelle’s music. A classically trained pianist who grew up in New York and Paris, Glockabelle (née Annabelle Cazes) has been performing for years, garnering attention when she showed off her unique glockenspiel playing style during a tour with Fiery Furnaces in 2008. Most recently, she utilized her singing chops by voicing The Go! Team’s “Catch Me On The Rebound,” off the superlative new album The Scene Between.

Her new Wolf BBQ EP showcases her art-punk, synth-pop provocateur music with gleeful abandon, while still highlighting her exquisite musicianship. The Nate Dorr-directed video for single “Wolf BBQ” pairs a spastic track with an imagined 8-bit video game, in which the wolf protagonist does exactly what you’d expect: hits up a barbecue. The music is overstimulated pop (she refers to it as “glockrock”), as though someone gave Deerhoof a bunch of cocaine. Singing in both English and French, Cazes makes the song feels like the spawn of some Ritalin-addled pop culture collision. Watch it below, and then check out the list of European tour dates, where Glockabelle is opening up for The Go! Team, and presumably joining the group onstage every now and then, as well. (Sorry, Americans: Your only chance to catch her this summer is in Brooklyn, at a one-off show with Kaki King on May 21, at Rough Trade.) - A.V. Club

Are you ready for another totally unique, kickass woman making music out of NYC? Glockabelle is a classically trained pianist from Paris who, like a creature from Peter Pan, plays a lyre-shaped glockenspiel using eight thimbled fingers. She also experiments with two vintage Casiotones, sings in French and describes her music as “glockrock” - but maybe "glockensp-synth" is more accurate, considering the psych tendencies. Though her songs are most often delightful and whimsical, they will also feature some dark material. For instance, her chirpy Ramone’s cover “le KKK a pris mon bébé” translates into “The KKK took my baby”. Enchanté Glockabelle! - The Deli Magazine

Technique in action: The glockenspiel has a new heyday in indie-rock, following a lineage from Phil Spector through the E Street Band through U2’s first album to the Arcade Fire. But I haven’t seen one played the way the Fiery Furnaces did: not with mallets, but with thimbles on fingertips. That can make for more simultaneous notes, more busy metallic pling. - The New York Times

Opener Glockabelle, shredding up her Casio keyboards and a glockenspiel (with cymbals on all of her fingers), sent the room into a frenzied tailspin. Watching her fingers whiz across the keys is an exercise in blinking. Her playful French lyrics, her stuffed tiger, her art-punk attitude, all of it is impressive. - Seattle Music News

Everyone follow @Glockabelle: Real-deal nasty, insane, high-speed NYC noise-punk, not cool kids trading bands like Pokémon cards. -

Get to the Roxy early and catch New York–based solo artist Glockabelle, who makes wonderfully chaotic French pop with Casios and a glockenspiel. - L.A. Weekly

Glockabelle followed, whose mix of Zelda old school computer fantasy driven sounds, subtle glam rock makeup reminders and rolling thunder heavy rock storm drumming left me witnessing something rare and unique. Drawing art from everyday life, like washing machines, less you spin me right round, more musical mechanicalness, delving beyond the sounds of the wires electrifying, Glockabelle brings a colorful new spin (uh-hum) to the mundane. Not to mention, thimbles on fingers playing glockenspiel, drifting drummer to sleep. All in all, the outside is loud noise carnage, but the layers are intricate and masterful. It's imagination overload exploded, the sounds of sugar (not literal), undertone interludes of The Doors (was that just me?) and a delightfully comical leading lady makes Glockabelle an enjoyable ride through unusual talent. - The Bay Bridged