Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson :: Glory Fades (XKatedral)

All in all, a shimmering, beautiful, bold, nostalgic and carefully crafted ambient album that will also please fans of classical minimalism (Lou Harrisson, John Luther Adams), Steve Tibbetts’ Northern Song, as well as Appalachian / primitive guitar soundscapes with an experimental and soothing atmospheric tendency.

In search of new sonic possibilities

Happy to notice that the tremendous, emotionally transportive, sorrowing and challenging Emanate published in 2020 by FatCat is followed by this new beautiful joint effort. Berlin-based Yair Elazar Glotman and Stockholm-based Mats Erlandsson have been collaborating since 2015. They’ve been known from the audience thanks to their first release on Miasmah. As modern sound artists such as Jacaszek, Richard Skelton, Marco Boldini, Frédéric D Oberland, their musical writing style is characterized by constant new explorations on traditional chamber acoustic instruments in search of new sonic possibilities, inviting the listener to be immersed in dense, rich, slowly evolving and imaginative soundscapes of lush textures.

Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson operate a perfect balance between electro-acoustic researches and post-ambient minimalism built on sinuous melodic phrases. Booth intellectual and deeply emotional. Glory Fades is welcomed by avant-gardism/drone orientated Swedish label XKatedral offers new compositional ideas and a distinctive tendencies for abstract folkish resonances that won’t deny leading figures from so-called Cosmic Americana or pastoral guitar ambient works from Chuck Johnson and Jordan Reyes.

 

The tracks on Glory Fades are pleasantly entrancing, with deep evocations of desert places and vast horizons and until the end l must say it is pretty unique and nuanced. Suspenseful-detached melodies are articulated to repetitive arpeggios built on guitar strings. This sense of soaring melodicism and evanescent dreaminess makes this guitar-picking guitar/double bass post-classical album an alluring musical experience that encourages introspection.

All in all, a shimmering, beautiful, bold, nostalgic and carefully crafted ambient album that will also please fans of classical minimalism (Lou Harrisson, John Luther Adams), Steve Tibbetts’ Northern Song, as well as Appalachian / primitive guitar soundscapes with an experimental and soothing atmospheric tendency.

Glory Fades is available on XKatedral. [Bandcamp]