Flying Scribble - We're A Chameleon

11 August 2010 by Richard Wilson

With instrumentation and vocals that hauntingly echo like a theremin, this quirky Abbottsford duo have released a bold and startlingly unique debut LP with We're A Chameleon. With little more than drums and keys (sometimes organ, sometimes synth, sometimes piano accordian), they've produced an album that draws you in with its complex simplicity.

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Flying Scribble succeed in creating a a unified sound throughout the album; the clunky opening bars of Puzzlemind carry through the album. Driven largely by the quirky keys, We're A Chameleon at times takes turns towards unabashed synth-pop such as Tree to Tree, other times taking this sound all the way into Atari computer game territory as on Anyway. All the while, Louise Terry and Gray Taylor draw from a wide variety of world music influences. There's the East-meets-West-meets-Gypsy fusion on Porthole, replete with lurching sea shanty accordion.

For all its worldly and other-worldly origins, We're A Chameleon feels firmly rooted in jazz traditions; The delightful bossa nova Coconut Walk is perhaps the closest that these influences rise to the surface, but each track on the album takes pages from contemporary jazz perhaps more than organ, vocals and drums might have you initially think. There's no shortage of outside harmonies and contradictory tones that makes We're A Chameleon an unlikely pop addition to the world of free jazz.

Flying Scribble's debut is bizarre, confusing and even unsettling. But its these enigmatic qualities that make We're A Chameleon an enjoyably unconventional album that draws the listener in.

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