Drawing on influences as wide-ranging as Terry Riley, Billie Holiday, Björk, and Fleetwood Mac, GABI is the experimental pop project of New York's classically trained composer/vocalist Gabrielle Herbst. The daughter of an ethnomusicologist, she grew up studying piano and clarinet as well as Balinese dance and gamelan music while living in Indonesia with her family. After returning to the States, she continued her training at Bard College, where she counted Joan Tower, Zeena Parkins, and Marina Rosenfeld among her teachers as she studied voice and composition. With works presented at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center and an opera, 2014's Bodiless, commissioned by the experimental venue Roulette, Herbst established herself as a force in modern composition. However, this work also inspired her to craft shorter pieces showcasing her voice as GABI starting in 2013. Using a double-track loop pedal, she composed soothing, open-ended tracks designed as an antidote to an overstimulated, technology-driven world. To flesh out these songs, she recruited percussionist Matthew O'Koren, violist Rick Quantz, violinist Josh Henderson, and guitarist/trombonist Aaron Roche as well as producers Paul Corley and Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never. The single "Koo Koo" arrived in late 2014, a few months ahead of the April 2015 release of GABI's full-length debut, Sympathy, via Lopatin's Software label. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi