Marlon Edgar’s Extrastellar Ekphrastic review of Droll | Keller Williams featuring Gibb Droll

Marlon Edgar’s Extrastellar Ekphrastic review of Droll | Keller Williams featuring Gibb Droll
by Marlon Edgar

It’s 5 o’clock on a Friday, a wet scorpion afternoon. In the basement where it’s cool, “Settler’s Mix” exudes heat from the outset. There’s acoustic rock, a duet of players, a definite interplay; soaring electric guitar casually morphs into dance music, synthesizers, a percussive groove in an Ozric Tentacles mode. From slow to uptempo, from hot to post-heat, a sub-tropical affair, it’s cooler than cold to sweat this way.

“Flip Phone Love” & we know it’s a new kind of Keller album; but who is Gibb Droll? It's as if therefore thus in a k-hole, the album spinning at the wrong speed, so slow I’ve got to thinking… of pure guava & rubber bands, lost somewhere back a digit in time.

Delicate & dramatic, suspenseful, a western theme: “Six Miles.” A reticent nearing of the unknown. Tone by volume play, a spleen-like essence, old blood, thin & crisp as Colorado mountain air. An alien landing; a European guide, Virgil-esque in the shadow of understanding wherein one must lower oneself. 

Down with an old-world vibe about “Flutus,” namesake of Leah Tumerman’s cover art. Midi-flute, drums & bass. In another time there’d be lute & lyre, hurdy-gurdy & oud, a littoral breeze aloft from the Mediterranean, swimming the fields of rye; a circle of continental percussionists hammering away, stick on stone, mallet on yer heartstrings, captured in the intrepid brushstrokes apause in a continuum. In our time though, we beatbox, it’s simple Musicology, to meet “The Goat” in stride, grazing as Dionysus would, for maybe four bars in the enormity of time. A treacherous Garcia flavored meander in the dead of night; a murky ambient wave, woodland birdsong, flowing water & traffic, one last folky lyric borne of the farmlife idyllic & lost in the rat race.

“Curious” where in time this ship scuds. Victorian sconces light the houses, synthesizers deliver the gospel, robots mop the kitchen. If speed is a virtue, then brevity’s the mission.

Like slime on the corner, look! a nickel, a nickel for the nickelodeon & stay pushing “Porch Jam,” ashudder down the sidewalk, shoulder-shiver, hip-toss. That nostalgic 1990s swell into the “Hoo and Coot” finale. Hot sauce & cool water. Bitters & marmalade. A breezy outro. Remember that the next time the happy hour drummer loads out in a minivan. But me, I’m nine steps up the damn stairs & headed for freedom, bound for glory, my own stunt double.

from kellerwiliams.net || All songs written by Keller Williams & Gibb Droll
Keller Williams: guitar, bass, drum programming and vocals
Gibb Droll: guitar, bass, drum programming
Produced, Mixed and Engineered by Gibb Droll
Mastered by Wayne Pooley
Album cover painting of Flutus the Goat by Leah Tumerman
Graphic Design Mark Berger at Madison House Design
Special thanks to Sean McConnell (@sean_mcconnell) at Silent Desert Studio in Nashville, TN <>