artist The Invisible Clock Factory

It’s been four years since The Invisible Clock Factory released their debut single, and it’s been time well spent. The Toronto-based duo of Adam Bunch and Matthew Ivanowich has been hard at work, meticulously piecing together their first full-length record, Somewhere Beyond the Blue-Cheese Moon. Using nothing more than a ramshackle collection of instruments and computer equipment, along with a talent for twisting sounds into strange, new shapes and a penchant for fairy tale lyrics and infectious pop hooks, the pair has crafted an ambitious debut: ten sprawling songs, each built from hundreds of individual tracks.

Strongly influenced by the concept-driven music of artists like The Flaming Lips and the Elephant Six Collective, the album is vaguely centered around the kind of elaborate premise you might expect from the pairing of a rock critic with a philosopher. (Bunch has written for PopMatters and Crawdaddy! and is the Editor-in-Chief of SoundProof Magazine, as well as a former member of Toronto rock band The Coast; Ivanowich is pursuing his PhD in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.) The record hints at the story of an orphaned girl who imagines her parents have escaped to a wonderful, far-away world. It’s an album of lush soundscapes and epic scope where references to quantum physics, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Vietcong mix with those of a child’s mind: sunflowers, lollipops and astronauts.

The world of the Invisible Clock Factory is a world of irresistible melodies, screaming feedback, hand-clapping choruses, obscure samples, toy xylophones, field recordings, bright guitars and roaring tympani. It will have you singing along even as you are surprised at every turn.