GLIM – aerial view of model

(CD / Karate Joe Records)

Andreas Berger, the main mind behind Glim, also plays with Mimi Secue (also released on Karate Joe) amongst other bands, and listening to the fragile and winding atmospheres presented on “aerial view of model”, it makes you think that he might be the person responsible for keeping the poppier side of the band down and the sounddrenched avantgardistic side up. On the other hand, this might just be jumping to conclusions. One thing is clear, though, Berger likes to revel in sounds and he has found his own intense way of resting, that makes words like laidback or chill out sound nervous. So much that he makes labelmate Takuma Itoi sound like a fratboy.

The music on here lives and breathes without the artifical help of rhythms or vocals or melodies. It is living proof that sound witnessed as texture or fabric has so much live and beauty in itself. His mixture of glimmering and wavering atmospheres with gentle noises, such as a high frequency here or some static there, produces an impression of endless drifting in a comfortable surrounding. Think of anything from an airbed on the ocean in vicinity to the beach to a cybernautic bubble of warmth and life-supporting fluids and gasses flying through a cold and unfriendly space. Thinking of it, we are all floating in such a bubble. It’s just a metaphor, don’t get too excited.

Glim is also not afraid to use unprocessed sounds of acoustic or electric guitar strings being plucked (“Anarene” and “Next Days” respectively) or even some older sounding, folkloristic instruments, which in this surrounding might come off as harsh or revolutionary even, though of course that isn’t the true reason for its importance. At times the density of the music increases by numbers and the imagery is one of being stuck in a timeloop of a millisecond of a full orchestra blowing away, for sheer size, though this is an idea or thought association reaped from Marsen Jules “Herbstlaub” album. Like a shallow mountain water that only reveals its depth when you fall into it and the coldness starts to numb your skin and muscles. At other times the sounds belonging to the music recede away into the backdrop of the record and give space and time for whatever it is that is surrounding you at the moment. Until some moments or minutes later the music slowly and almost shyly starts to crawl back into your sensory field.

Berger remains within an environment of synthetic and artificial sound throughout all of the compositions on here, with a few notable exceptions, but they all sound and feel(!) surprisingly organic, warm and natural. Those wailing sounds drifting in and out of the mix during “Glaze” for instance are very much like reaching out for Sigur Ros in melody but then rejecting them for too much obviousness in their harmonic structures. It is like he has found a way to polish his music up until it becomes a breathing organism instead of just a shining, concrete ball. So he also stays true to his initial confrontation between expectations and delivery that he solves into gentleness and warmth. Or between form and structure, if you prefer. Or between static and movement. Standing atop a mountain looking at the endless skyways opening up ahead, there is just no way to start a quarrel, as all the opposites start to merge into one universal whole of beauty.