SPIN - Glockabelle's new 'Wolf BBQ' is anarchic enchantment. 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.”  

The A.V. Club - Her new Wolf BBQ EP showcases her art-punk, synth-pop provocateur music with gleeful abandon, while still highlighting her exquisite musicianship. 


Chris Weingarten (1000 Times Yes, SPIN, Rolling Stone)Everyone follow @Glockabelle: Real-deal nasty, insane, high-speed NYC noise-punk, not cool kids trading band like Pokémon cards. [She] took me back to when "noise punk" required ability, ambition, and executing your crazy ideas.


Jon Pareles (The New York Times)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 [this] way: not with mallets, but with thimbles on fingertips. That can make for more simultaneous notes, more busy metallic pling.

Culture Collide In what feels like a Michel Gondry-directed fever dream, New York based french-speaking art punk Annabelle Cazes, aka Glockabelle strategically attacks her keyboard and glockenspiel with thimbles on each finger in the video for her song "Ne Touche Pas." Off her latest EP Wolf BBQ which came out May 19, "Ne Touche Pas" ('don't touch' in English) is both precious and haunting, a sweet electronic frenzy in a minor key. 

Liz Ohanesian (L.A. Weekly)  - Glockabelle makes wonderfully chaotic rock with French pop with Casios and a glockenspiel.


Stephanie Dore (Seattle Music News) - Opener Glockabelle, shredding up her Casio keyboards and a glockenspiel (with thimbles 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.


Franklin Soults (Boston Globe) - (She) shows off her strange prowess with a Casio and glockenspiel.

Leora Mandel (The Deli Magazine) - 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!

Ria Burman (The Bay Bridged) - 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.

Shane Lange (Factory Worker Media, Vancouver CA) - Opening act Glockabelle‘s retro-synth cabaret has a strong playful element and childlike zeal for simple stories on vintage and exotic instruments (i.e. early Casio keyboards, drum machine and a glockenspiel.) Sung in both French and English, Annabelle Cazes performed her charming one-woman show in the presence of a stuffed tiger (honourary bassist) and a live napping drummer, whom Cazes tucked in beneath a blanket between songs about a variety of anthropomorphic animals that (respectively) have a barbecue, kiss, and fall into a swimming pool. While a clear departure from the concerts Factory Worker Media typically covers, King’s and Cazes’ performances were a thrilling reminder that the transgression of boundaries in music can occur anywhere along the genre spectrum. An inspiring example of unique creative expression. 

Pop News (FR) - With Glockabelle, we are immersed in the sixties, with lush reverb, [and] this fresh voice in French and naive lyrics, which are reminiscent of Francoise Hardy and France Gall. Add to this acute guitars and western-sounding riffs, the atmosphere is all there. The [music] is yet insidiously filled with modern keyboards, which operate a strange diversion, which gently break this psyche in the middle. Rejoicing. 

Pretext Social Club - Glockabelle creates song that live in the space between hysteria and sustained childhood. Her music, sung in French, is playful but emphatic and complex. 

media



credit: Nate Dorr