S. Glass

***“This solo album by the former Bananafish editor S. Glass is a recording of naturally jarring qualities and intent. The rippling, continuous pace doesn’t allow a whole lot of time for sinking the talons in. Incongruous sound sources are bent, warped, wrung and wrenched between the ears, as if one’s brain is an object to be flossed by Glass’s quietly punishing dentist’s hand. Clattering machines and burnt-out organs fizz as though amplified via baby monitor. Brief, ad-hoc choirs of rendered vocals are drenched in clicky synthesis and, yeah, some train noises are even detectable in the mix. But don’t for a minute ascribe his motivations to churlish desire to throw crap at a kitchen sink, then a wall, with no sense of what should stick. I’ve spoken before about the supreme deftness with which Glass sculpts his sounds and it’s all in shining evidence here. If you’ve paid attention to our man’s offerings for decades via Glands of External Secretion, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, This Is Yvonne Lovejoy, and the many various collabs, you’ll recognize a ton of now-trademark things on Cesspool of the Angels, too. We could talk about how painstaking it is to collect speech samples of American Assholes tricking themselves into believing something incorrect, or the nerdily inclined might be keen to know serial and model numbers responsible for the massive palette of often rich, pristine electronics and processes, but the skill of Glass’s editing is more interesting, especially his ear for... production, lacking a better word for it. This stuff is not necessarily serious, but Glass and his peers are serious as hell about doing it, deserving of consideration among some of the finest, most world-class people pissing about with difficult sounds today. It’s got action enough to suit all, from bottom-feeding post-underground burnouts to all you guys who collect that INA-GRM type shit.”—Duncan Harrison