Jacaszek – Glimmer
To be honest, when Jacaszek “Treny” album was released in 2008, it was one the year’s albums that left me speachless. The whole piece was so dark, yet uplifting – drowning me in pastoral drones and eerie sampling snippets from what seemed to originate mostly from chamber music recordings. Haunting vocal and choral echos flickered between deep cello tones, cembalo pickings and sadness dripping string sections. No wonder that the news of another Jacaszek album left me with quite a bit of anticipation.
Glimmer has a different feel to it. It seems to be a lot lighter in tone. The heavy weighting sadness changed for a more floating melancholy. While Treny was more like a slow train running you over, Glimmer is more introspective, more circular. It is harder to get an emotional connection to the tracks. Not because they are not good, but because they are composed in a more distant way giving them more a feeling of being a soundtrack.
The way the record is produced adds a lot to this specific notion. While Treny had this impression of samples just falling into the absolute right place by careful selection and a little bit of chance, Glimmer feels more composed. The way the individual parts react to each other evoke such assumption. At times it seems a little bit too perfect. I miss the cracks between the samples, the fissures beneath the surface, where the friction between the individual layers created new movements. The interstices that revealed themselves only with close and repeated listening.
This is an excellent record that shines a lot brighter than most of the stuff that gets released these days, but it left me with the impression that it missed a couple of chances by trying a little too hard to be perfect and flawless.
