Gyratory System

Gyratory System functions as the hallucinatory sound project created by London, England-based musician Andrew Blick. A seasoned session trumpeter, Blick has recorded and performed alongside Cinerama, Grooverider, Solex, and Moonshake while also belonging to the Food-signed 1990s band Octopus and to One More Grain, the group led by Daniel Patrick Quinn. This extensive body of work prompted legendary broadcaster John Peel to observe in 2000 that he might need to prohibit Blick from further visits to the BBC Maida Vale studios on account of the musician’s frequent appearances on Peel Sessions. The 2008 dissolution of One More Grain prompted Blick to establish Gyratory System. Over many preceding years he had already developed “The Process,” the operational method that now propels the project. “The Process” constitutes an inventive assembly of sounds and concepts that applies a scientific, cerebral methodology to the act of recording music. Drawing inspiration from steam engines and monumental engineering, Blick constructs sonic blocks according to idiosyncratic formulas that recall the approach of avant-garde composer Steve Reich. Angular Records signed Gyratory System in 2009, issuing the debut album Sound-Board Breathes—a phrase drawn from Milton’s Paradise Lost—in October of the same year. Assisted by his father Robin and additional sympathetic session players, Blick shaped a record that fused the free-flowing street jazz of Miles Davis’s 1972 classic On the Corner with the avant-garde funk of 1980s post-punk acts such as A Certain Ratio and 23 Skidoo.