Neu Arc Light

As far as lo-fi, psychedelic and experimental sounds go you’d think that we’d have just about heard enough by now without having much want to discover any more. But when it’s done as well as it is by Brooklyn’s Ryan Gabel, it’s pretty difficult to resist.

Much of the charm of Gabel’s music is in its tense and eerie feel, and this is at least in part caused by his pure weirdo persona under Arc Light. While synths buzz and squeal and a fairly simple drum pattern loops, Gabel self-harmonises; his deep, dark and odd-ball voice often layered with a lighter, more actual singing vocal. It’s this kind of split personality situation that allows both a tense and dark tone and a surprisingly catchy and pop melody to work together successfully in the same song.

What also charms is the teasing and modest nature of his songs, despite the length of time each track must take Gabel alone to make. It’s easy to imagine Ryan sat on his own in his bedroom, playing around with different guitar lines and synth patterns, fiddling away with his laptop and adding layers of effects day after day just to create the one track, and yet the temptation to ever burst into all-out chorus or delve into ‘bigger’ sounds is always resisted. Instead, he sticks with the same looping drum machine line, guitar patterns and lo-fi sound throughout, and his patience really pays off in his music.

As Gabel himself admits, his music is the “mutant child of too much inspirational music” – a sound clearly made up of an expansive range of influences that range from industrial rock to pop – but it’s a distorted combination of widespread sounds that juxtapose to brilliant and understated and effect.

As of yet Gabel has strayed little further than his bedroom with Arc Light having never played a live show under the moniker, and that’s pretty understandable given it’s probably a logistical nightmare to play music with so much going on as a one-man band live (though apparently he’s soon to get some help from a friend which may allow for future live performances). But what is a nightmare for live shows may have helped his productivity on record - a handful of EP’s and a self-titled full-length are available available on his bandcamp page, and there’s another full-length album and a split release on its way.