Egress Review on Textura
You can also read the review on Textura’s website.
Glitterbug’s Egress, the fifth release on Yair Etziony’s False Industries, is pitched as “audible storytelling, similar to radio-play and audio drama scores, dealing with notions of escape, isolation, loss, mourning, and undefined fear,” a characterization that, at least as it pertains to Till Rohman’s four originals, isn’t far off the mark. Apparently, Glitterbug as a project has strong techno roots, with the Cologne-based Rohman known for epic DJ sets. But while he might be nominally associated with techno, his Egress compositions are worlds removed from the genre. A four-chapter work for string ensemble and electronics, Egress’s richly coloured, beatless scene-paintings clearly are crafted more for headphones listening than the dance floor. In fact, the pieces are so thoroughly unrelated to techno, it becomes hard to think of him as a techno DJ after listening to the material.
“Vacuity” slowly emerges from silence and then gradually assumes form as a cinematic evocation of foreboding pitches, muffled bell tones, and sub-lunar percussive patterns. Calling it cinematic in this case is no mere conceit as the material could very convincingly function as part of a soundtrack and specifically as music to accompany a film’s opening. Speaking of sub-lunar, the ambient-dronescape “Stagger” largely situates itself within a quietly pulsating micro-universe where sounds barely rise to the level of audibility, while “Span” arranges multiple layers of synthetic washes and warbling tones into eight serene minutes of slow-motion ebb-and-flow. The ponderous “Appraise,” much like the other material, exudes a rather cryptic, sci-fi feel and brings with it a strong sense of unease and imminent threat.
Deviating from the uniform style of the originals are two remixes, the first of which sees Tilman Erhorn (Mille Plateaux, Neo Ouija) re-animating “Span” with restrained clicks-&-cuts-styled beat textures and brightening it with bright melodic ostinatos, resulting in a colourful remix whose mood is far sunnier and light-hearted than the original’s. Not to take away anything from the material authored by Rohman himself, but the forty-seven-minute release’s most memorable track comes from Rafael Anton Irisarri, whose The Sight below treatment of “Vacuity” transforms it into an eleven-minute dynamo of ominous drones and thick vinyl crackle powered by a locomotive tech-house pulse and a thumping bass line.
March 2012