Glasser
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Glasser, the elevated electronic project from Cameron Mesirow, is releasing her anticipated third album ‘crux’ via One Little Independent Records on October 6th.
Glasser
‘crux’ takes Glasser’s entrancing blend of dreamy experimental pop and layered electronics to explore themes of personal identity, emotional vulnerability, and the human experience. The album maps journeys of self-discovery as she unpacks intimate experiences with a cathartic outlook. Specifically, the tracks on ‘crux’ discuss the death of an old friend, her meditations on the fragility of life and the delicacy of relationships in times of uncertainty. More than anything it’s about the importance of creativity and writing while healing, and on an individual level, looking inward and the examination of one’s grief, anxiety, and insecurities. Musically it searches outward, it includes the use of traditional folk, Celtic to communicate her Scottish roots, and Eastern-European styles, all introduced to her lush, atmospheric production, intricate vocal harmonies, and complex rhythms.
New single ‘Vine’ revels in the glitchy left-field elements of Glasser’s sound; it’s epic in scope, with ambitious, expansive synths and strings, and infectious melodies. She tells us that “‘Vine’ was written a long time ago. It was like an attempt at making something where all the parts sound like they’re very separated. I was thinking like jazz, actually. It was about getting back to writing music after feeling a bit disconnected from the machinery around making it your profession”.
Apart from her majestic 2022 single ‘New Scars’, ‘crux’ marks a return following her sublime ‘Sextape’ mix in 2018 and two critically acclaimed albums, ‘Ring’ and ‘Interiors’, released in 2010 and 2013 respectively. In this time Glasser performed at MoMA, PS1, The Walker Arts Center, MOCA, Coachella, Primavera, Latitude, Field Day, and she toured with the XX and Sigur Rós’ Jónsi. She’s also collaborated on remix projects with the likes of Fever Ray, Jamie XX and John Talabot.
Of the hiatus Glasser explains; “Just getting back to making songs was hard for me after the last album. When I made my first album, I didn’t have an established routine of trying and failing, it was very immediate. The second record was made after a few years of touring, which is a very unstable life, and I still didn’t establish a relationship to creating things regularly. After its release, I didn’t have a centre from which to recompose myself.”
The thing that finally brought me back to music as a positive experience was that I began taking lessons to learn Balkan singing. I wanted to try to learn all this vocal gymnastic stuff that I was listening to in the Bulgarian state television choir records. I started writing songs and working toward an album.”
The tracks on ‘crux’ weave disparate elements together into a cohesive, complimentary whole. They make up an album that seamlessly marries an eclectic array of sounds to create a complete, immersive concept piece about the search for meaning and answers through the creation of art. Coming back to the making of an album after a decade (released 10 years and 2 days after to be precise) wasn’t only therapeutic but necessary to process notions of life and death.
“I guess it’s just about the sort of inevitability of us coming to our own fate, and some of the lyrics are about my voice and the fear of my voice disappearing. Itself a kind of death – it’s a death of sorts. This record for me is texturally and thematically half heaven and half earth. ‘crux’ was a word that stuck with me always, as it’s onomatopoeic, it literally sounds like a vital aspect of intersection. It’s a cross in Latin, and it’s a horizon to me. I’m the crux of this project and I’m on the earth and heaven is inside of me. And in us all.”
Born in Boston, raised in the Bay Area by musician parents, Mesirow’s Mother was a founding member of Human Sexual Response, a queer new wave band who performed in the late 70’s into the early 80’s. She crafted GarageBand demos that pitted her delicate, swooping vocals over sparse electronic rhythms and circular melodies that evoked avant-garde music and global folk at the same time. These tracks made their way to labels True Panther and Young Turks, which released both her albums. She self-released ‘Sextape’, an intimate project that built her production around conversations on formative sexual experiences, which was praised by fans and critics alike, before signing to One Little Independent Records, marking her next creative step.
“Soaring vocals with free-flowing, rhythm-obsessed eclecticism that make for a notably welcoming collection of atmospheric, electronics-brushed pop” – Pitchfork
“It’s Glasser’s sonic constructions which holds our interest first and foremost; a bolder and more up-front sound” – The Line Of Best Fit
“Potent, sexually charged and teeming with life. Make no mistake, this isn’t sex as male-gaze-pandering titillation, packaged in clichéd, chart-friendly couplets, but sex from a singular female perspective: intimate, all-encompassing, ecstatic. This is pop for consenting adults: music for awake minds” – Dazed