I am really touched by this review. Somebody actually made the effort to listen and found great ways to describe my music and my intentions with this piece. Thank you J. Simpson and Chain DLK for being so understanding and good to me! You can read the review also here.
“An egress is the act of coming or going out of a place. On Glitterbug’s Egress EP, the seventh release from German producer/sound artist Till Rohmann, the four original tracks evoke images of departure, of emptiness, venturing out into the unknown.
Egress is a work for string ensemble and electronics; it is at times soothing, at times foreboding. The strings give a sense of tension, like an old Orson Welles shadow noir. Many comparisons have been made to film music to describe Egress. If this were to score a movie, it would be by Ridley Scott or maybe Tarkovsky; it implies the void, the cold emptiness of outer space.
Egress starts out minimally on ‘Vacuity': the sound of wind, flittering dusty percussion dancing around yr head, before bell tones emerge from the depths, with a tintinnabulum dream logic of their own that sounds like being underwater. The strings kick in about 3/4 of the way through ‘Vacuity’ and linger for the rest of the album; there is a sense that SOMETHING’S GOING ON, but its not clear what. Its like the haunted visitors in Solaris, hidden behind closed doors, leaving you guessing. ‘Span’ sounds like a mid ’70s Klaus Schulze outtak, with its rich colorful amniotic synth pads, a moment of optimist, the euphoria of leaving, before settling into the paranoid dripping dread of ‘Appraise’, all sustained string dissonance and insectile flourishes bouncing willy-nilly around the stereo field. ‘Stagger’, the last of the album’s four originals, sounds like finding a pulsating brain at the center of a meteor belt, or perhaps stepping into the rusting carcass of a mechanical beast, before discovering that it still lives.
The remixes of ‘Span’ and ‘Vacuity’ by Tilman Ehrhorn and The Sight Below are less cold and introspective than the original source material, and will probably get more mileage on the dancefloors. The Sight Below’s 11-minute re-imagining of Vacuity’s windy desolation into a club friendly mnml tech-house voyage is a real treat and an album high-light, bearing Rafael Anton Irisarri’s usual hallmark of excellence and the smoothest, roundest bass tones conceivable.
Egress gives us something to dream about while we wait for Glitterbug’s newest full-length, Cancerboy, is due in May, and its a pleasant lull for the late winter months. Fans of out of body experiences and Lustmord will dig this, and anybody with ears can hear the stunning production quality. The strings add a nice human, emotional touch, and give it a real sense of class, of sophistication. Till Rohmann recommends giving this a spin on a decent hi-fi or a good pair of headphones, and i would have to agree. Go big or go home, this music works best when it is appreciated. I look forward to hearing more from this talented artist.”
