Pablo's Eye: The Light Was Sharp, Our Eyes Were Open LP

Enigmatic Brussels collective Pablo’s Eye reappear with a poetic transition between desert blues, ambient vignettes, adult contemporary, and machine driven hustle on a new LP for Stroom, RIYL This Mortal Coil, To Rococo Rot, Barbara Morgenstern, Daniel Lanois, classic 4AD.

Elusive as a dream, the 4th Pablo’s Eye release on Stroom also appears to be their first original suite for the label after a series of retrospective compilations. ‘The light was sharp, our eyes were open’ was composed, recorded and produced in the group’s native Brussels in 2023, and revolves a line-up familiar to their early Stroom sides that spanned some 30 years of work between a 1989 debut and their 2018-2019 release, here wrapping etheric textures and midnight whimsy around shimmering chorus-pedal slide guitar set to Richard Skinner’s texts, with the addition of Noor-e-Sahar Ali and Ludwig Lepauw lending fresh spice to their current formulation.

In the band’s own words, their music “is a temporary atmosphere, like a taste or a dream…”, and here limns its outlook with a passage from an essay. For 40 minutes that feel twice as long due the richness of mise-en-scene and movement across its 14 parts - the album involves its user in a sort of neo-noir narrative where the track titles are as much cues as the literal narration and evocative music. Read any way, they weave us into a cinéma pour l'oreille that suggests, not tells, and leaves lots to the imagination between their Vini reilly-esque intro and panoramic Hollywood outro, via pieces recalling To Rococo Rot’s art-pop in ‘Red light returning’, a widescreen centrepiece ‘The dog days are long gone’, and reverberating drama of ‘Locked Away’ like some missing piece of the 4AD puzzle