Glitterbug Podcast for Smoke Machine Taipeh!
The content of this podcast was recorded at the closing concert of this year’s ℅ pop festival in Cologne / Germany, which took place in the St. Michael’s church in the center of the city. It’s split into two parts (there was a short intermission between the two), the first 27 minutes consist of a composition for electronics and string ensemble named “Egress”, the second part is based on the quieter parts of my last album, “Cancerboy”.
I met the dear people of Smoke Machine from Taipeh / Taiwan last May in the Metrowaves Festival in Beijing, and it’s always amazing to find new friends with a similar outlook on art and music. So I’d like to thank Josh and the crew for the opportunity to share my music in places that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet (but hope to do that soon!).
About Egress:
“Egress is a work for string ensemble and electronics composed and recorded by Glitterbug, consisting of four chapters – Vacuity, Span, Stagger and Appraise.
Continuing his notable cinematic approach and pushing it to its next level, Glitterbug unveils Egress as audible storytelling, similar to radio-play and audio drama scores, dealing with notions of escape, isolation, loss, mourning, and undefined fear.
The composition’s thirty minutes are desolate and bare. They narrate an idea of a final, irreversible departure, presenting a soundtrack travelling through vacuous territories and hollow drifts. It narrates a void of inhabitable space, documenting the emotionality of the sound of a world post society, of a future in an unknown and possibly hostile place.
Egress is formed by a reduced musical structure, built upon discerning tonal subtleties, suspended single notes, and harmonics going slowly atonal.”
About Cancerboy:
Glitterbug’s albums, releases and remixes (on respected labels such as Mule, Nowtown, Ghostly, Ki Records and many more) have long placed him in a musical and artistic category of his own. He is a timeless, skillful and daring producer, immune to hypes and seasonal sub-genre fashions. He has developed his own particular musical language that spans seamlessly between deep techno and abstract intimate compositions, always poignant with score-like textures.
His 3rd studio album, Cancerboy, is another milestone conjoining powerful musical expression with heavy content. Cancerboy is an intimate autobiographical journey investigating one of the major experiences that shaped his life, his childhood struggle with cancer. Cancerboy is a personal, private chronicle of battles won and struggles lost, a sound-log suspended in an in-between world.
Cancerboy is an album on the edge of consciousness. Faraway reverbs and analog roughness gain presence, and forward strides an unreserved sound; candid, direct and near. It’s music that allows itself to be angry and desperate, to battle and depart, to challenge and gall. Yet within all its darkness are driving, hopeful moments that shine bright – celebrating a deep love of life.